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Month: November 2020

Brazilian court prohibits ‘Catholic’ name for abortion advocacy group

Posted by | Nov 1, 2020 | , |

CNA Staff, Nov 1, 2020 / 08:00 am (CNA).-  

A Brazilian court has ruled that “Catholics for the Right to Decide” must remove the term “Catholic” from its name, as the organization’s goals are incompatible with the values of the Catholic Church. The organization is an outgrowth of the U.S.-based Catholics for Choice, which advocates for pro-abortion policies.

“In defending of the right to decide on abortion, which the Church clearly and severely condemns, there is a clear distortion and incompatibility of the name used in relation to the aims and specific actions of the association, which directly attack morality and good customs, in addition to harming the public good and interests,” said a decision from Judge Jose Carlos Ferreira In a Sao Paolo lawsuit.

The suit was filed by the Don Bosco Center for Faith and Culture Association, which argued that the use of the term “Catholic” by the pro-choice group is fradulent, since “under the pretext of defending the ‘reproductive rights of women,’” it is actually promoting the “murder of babies in the womb.”

A lower court had dismissed the complaint as unfounded and said that only an ecclesiastical authority had standing to bring such a complaint.

But the Don Bosco Center then filed an appeal with the Second Chamber Court, which ruled in the center’s favor Oct. 27.

Ferreira wrote in his decision that Catholics for the Right to Decide represents a “public, notorious, total and absolute incompatibility with the values” of the “Catholic Church in a general and universal way.”

In addition, the judge ruled that “freedom of speech will not be compromised in the least, and the association may defend its values and ideas (including abortion) as it deems appropriate, provided that it uses a consistent name, without presenting itself to society under the name of another institution that publicly and conspicuously adopts opposite values.”

Chris Tonietto, a Brazilian legislator and attorney who worked on the case, said after the ruling that “the name was considered subversive because it perverts the meaning of Catholicism itself, which is why we say that they created confusion.”

“This organization has always acted to create confusion, so much so that the name ‘Catholics for the Right to Decide’, was certainly used in an abusive and undue way,” he said.

On its Facebook page, the NGO stated that “it was not officially notified” of the court’s decision and “became aware of the decision through the press.”

The organization pledged to “take the appropriate measures after receiving the court order.”

Catholics for the Right to Decide was founded in 1993, as the U.S. organization Catholics for Choice expanded into Latin America.  In recent years, the group has invested millions of dollars to promote the legalization of abortion in Latin America.

In October 2012, a spokesperson for the U.S. bishops’ conference told journalists that Catholics for Choice “is not a Catholic organization.”

“It never has been, and it was created to oppose the Catholic position on abortion,” the spokesperson said.

 

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Group sets goal of eucharistic adoration in 1,000 parishes on Election Day

Posted by | Nov 1, 2020 | , , , , , , , |

y midday Oct. 30, Unite Our Nation was more than halfway to its goal of holding adoration of the Blessed Sacrament events at 1,000 parishes nationwide on Election Day, Nov. 3, while the voting polls are open in parishes’ respective time zones.

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Pope Francis names Archbishop Tomasi delegate to Order of Malta

Posted by | Nov 1, 2020 | , |

Vatican City, Nov 1, 2020 / 06:38 am (CNA).- Pope Francis on Sunday named Archbishop Silvano Maria Tomasi his special delegate to the Order of Malta, following the resignation of Cardinal Angelo Becciu.

In a pontifical letter Nov. 1, Pope Francis said he had accepted the resignation of Becciu as delegate and appointed Tomasi in his place.

Tomasi, 80, will be elevated to cardinal at a consistory on Nov. 28. In 2016, he retired after 13 years as permanent observer to the United Nations Office and Specialized Agencies in Geneva.

Cardinal Becciu had been the pope’s delegate to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta since February 2017, when he was appointed to oversee the nearly one-thousand-year-old order’s “spiritual and moral” renewal as it navigated a period of internal reform.

On Sept. 24, Pope Francis asked Becciu to resign as prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and from the rights of cardinals, following reports alleging he had used millions of euros of Vatican charity funds in speculative and risky investments.

As special delagate to the Order of Malta, Tomasi will collaborate with the order’s new Grand Master, who will be chosen in an election in Rome on Nov. 7.

Tomasi’s appointment comes at a crucial time for the historic order, which has been in a slow-moving constitutional crisis since Pope Francis compelled the resignation of a previous Grand Master, Fra’ Matthew Festing in 2017.

That decision came after Festing himself had compelled the resignation of Grand Chancellor Albrecht Freiherr von Boeselager Boeselager in 2016, after it became known that an aid project of the order in Myanmar had distributed thousands of condoms. Boselager insisted that he had not known about the distribution of condoms, and that he had put a stop to it as soon as he became aware.

In 2017, Boeselager was reinstated as Grand Chancellor, and Becciu was appointed as the pope’s personal delegate to oversee the order’s reform, effectively supplanting the role of the order’s Cardinal Patron, Cardinal Raymond Burke, who remains in post only nominally.

Becciu was to work with Fra’ Giacomo Dalla Torre, who was elected to succeed Festing, first on an interim basis and later permanently, as the order moved towards a revision of its governing code and constitution, including a revision of the roles and rights of its three levels of knights from around the world. Dalla Torre died in May.

On Nov. 7, the professed knights of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta will hold a Council Complete of State, a gathering of representatives from across the order’s provinces and ranks, at which they will elect a new Grand Master.

Boeselager told CNA last month that the “the papal delegate is not part of the structure of the order. He is a representative of the Holy Father, but he is not involved directly in the governance or work of the order.”

Pope Francis said in his Nov. 1 letter to Tomasi that he will “enjoy all the powers necessary to decide any questions that may arise for the implementation of the mandate entrusted to you, to receive the oath of the next Grand Master, and you will be my exclusive spokesperson for all that pertains to relations between this Apostolic See and the Order.”

An Italian, Tomasi was ordained a priest in 1965 as a member of the Congregation of the Missionaries of Saint Charles Borromeo.

He earned a PhD in sociology from Fordham University in New York City. In the 1970s and ’80s he taught sociology in New York and co-founded the Center for Migration Studies.

In 1989, Pope John Paul II named him secretary of the Pontifical Council for Pastoral Care of Migrants and Itinerant Peoples.

He later served as a Vatican diplomat, with posts as apostolic nuncio in Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Djibouti, before being appointed permanent observer.

 

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Hospitals see rise in moral distress

Posted by | Nov 1, 2020 | , |

“I knew I had to quit when my 15-year-old daughter would say, ‘Mom, don’t go to work and cry again.’ ”

That quote was just one data point in Francis Maza’s PhD thesis for his Doctor of Ministry at Toronto’s University of St. Michael’s College. Maza de…

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Solemnity of All Saints

Posted by | Nov 1, 2020 | |

Reading 1 RV 7:2-4, 9-14

I, John, saw another angel come up from the East,
holding the seal of the living God.
He cried out in a loud voice to the four angels
who were given power to damage the land and the sea,
“Do not damage the l…

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