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Month: January 2021

Biden taps supporter of contraceptive mandate to HHS position

Posted by | Jan 19, 2021 | , |

Washington D.C., Jan 19, 2021 / 10:25 am (CNA).- President-elect Joe Biden will nominate a supporter of the contraceptive mandate to a top position at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), he announced on Tuesday.

 

On Tuesday, Biden announced that he would nominate Dr. Rachel Levine, a biological man identifying as a transgender woman who has served as Pennsylvania’s health secretary since 2017, to be HHS Assistant Secretary for Health. Before serving as Pennsylvania’s health secretary, Levine served as the state’s physician general.

 

Levine has been outspoken on social issues, supporting gender-transition surgery and the contraceptive mandate while opposing a proposed 20-week abortion ban.

 

Levine’s nomination to HHS, along with that of Health Secretary nominee Xavier Becerra, signals that social issues could be priorities at the agency for the next several years. These might include pro-LGBTQ policies, funding of abortion providers, and religious freedom conflicts with Catholic organizations.

 

Regarding the Obama-era HHS contraceptive mandate, Levine in 2017 called it “immoral and unethical” to allow for religious exemptions to the mandate. Hundreds of non-profits and businesses—including the Little Sisters of the Poor—had objected to the mandate and the Obama administration’s opt-out process for objecting non-profits.

 

After the Trump administration announced in 2017 that religious employers and other organizations morally opposed to the contraceptive mandate could receive exemptions from it, Levine issued a sharp statement in opposition.

 

“It is immoral and unethical to give any employer the ability to take away access to health care from an entire gender,” Levine said as Pennsylvania’s acting health secretary, in 2017. “We cannot allow women’s health to be reduced to one issue or be jeopardized in any way.”

 

Levine also wrote an op-ed against the Trump administration’s reversal of Obama-era rules on transgender accommodation.

 

In Feb., 2017, the Trump administration said it would stop defending the Obama administration’s transgender bathroom policy in court; the policy had directed schools to allow students to use gender-specific bathrooms according to their gender identity, and not their biological sex.

 

In an op-ed for the Patriot-News, Levine wrote that “[t]he decision by the Trump administration to roll back the most basic protections for transgender and gender expansive youth is heartbreaking.”

 

“To Pennsylvania’s transgender and gender expansive youth and their families who are worried or concerned, I want you to know that Governor Wolf’s administration has your back,” Pennsylvania’s then-physician general wrote.

 

In 2016, Levine spoke out against a 20-week abortion ban that criminalized abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy except in cases where the mother’s life was in danger. The bill also banned the “dilation and evacuation” abortion procedure.

 

Levine said at the time that the bill “punishes women whose pregnancies have complications.”

 

“Women and their families, when faced with a devastating diagnosis of a significant fetal anomaly, have the right to make the decision which is appropriate for them, in consultation with their doctors,” Levine said.

 

Levine’s family moved their mother out of a personal care home early in the COVID-19 pandemic, because of the high spread of the virus; the decision invited some media scrutiny.

 

Levine was also questioned for the state’s policy of requiring nursing homes to accept recovering COVID patients from hospitals, although the state health secretary responded that asymptomatic staff at the homes—not patients discharged from hospitals—were the primary spreaders of the virus there.

 

If Levine is confirmed to HHS, along with Becerra, they together could craft policy to influence a number of issues including abortion, gender-transition surgery, and the contraceptive mandate.  

 

While California’s attorney general, Becerra fought aggressively in favor of an abortion coverage mandate that religious employers were not exempt from, and continued the prosecution of pro-life activist David Daleiden.

 

If confirmed as Health Secretary, Becerra—a Catholic—could reignite a number of Obama-era policies that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and other Catholic groups were opposed to.

 

These might include resurrecting court battles with the Little Sisters of the Poor and other Catholic groups that opposed the Obama administration’s procedure by which to “opt out” of the contraceptive mandate. The groups said that the policy still required them to provide coverage for contraceptives through their employee health plans, which they morally objected to.

 

Other HHS policies could include re-imposing the full transgender mandate—a requirement that doctors perform gender-transition surgery upon the referral of a mental health professional—and various requirements of religious groups that receive HHS grants, such as adoption agencies having to match children with same-sex couples.

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Highlights from the 2021 January Priest Conference

Posted by | Jan 19, 2021 | , |

  Fr. Boniface Hicks, OSB, during adoration Thanks to your support, since COVID hit we have successfully and safely held two in-person retreats serving our spiritual fathers. At our latest retreat at Lakeway Resort in Austin, Texas, we hosted over 140 priests from across the country—many of whom had never been to a St. Paul

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Pope Francis to Venezuelan clergy: Serve with ‘joy and determination’ amid pandemic

Posted by | Jan 19, 2021 | , |

Vatican City, Jan 19, 2021 / 08:05 am (CNA).- Pope Francis sent a video message on Tuesday encouraging priests and bishops in their ministry during the coronavirus pandemic and reminding them of two principles which he said would “guarantee the growth of the Church.”

“I would like to point out to you two principles that should never be lost sight of and which guarantee the growth of the Church, if we are faithful: love of neighbor and service to one another,” Pope Francis said in a video message to a meeting of priests and bishops in Venezuela on Jan. 19.

“These two principles are anchored in two sacraments that Jesus institutes at the Last Supper, and which are the foundation, so to speak, of his message: the Eucharist, to teach love, and the washing of the feet, to teach the service. Love and service together, otherwise it won’t work.”

In the video, sent to the virtual two-day meeting focused on priestly ministry during the coronavirus crisis, the pope encouraged priests and bishops to minister to “renew the gift of yourselves to the Lord and to his holy people” during the pandemic.

The meeting, organized by the Venezuelan bishops’ conference, takes place a week and a half after Venezuelan Bishop Cástor Oswaldo Azuaje of Trujillo died of COVID-19 at the age of 69.

Pope Francis said that the virtual meeting was an opportunity for priests and bishops “to share, in a spirit of fraternal ministry, your priestly experiences, your labors, your uncertainties, as well as your yearnings and your conviction to carry on the work of the Church, which is the work of the Lord.”

“In these difficult moments, the passage from the Gospel of Mark comes to mind (Mark 6: 30-31), which tells how the Apostles, on their return from the mission to which Jesus had sent them, gathered around him. They told him all they had done, everything they had taught and then Jesus invited them to go, alone with Him, to a deserted place to rest for a while.”

He added: “It is essential that we always return to Jesus, with whom we gather in sacramental fraternity to tell him and to tell each other ‘all that we have done and taught’ with the conviction that it is not our work, but that of God. It is he who saves us; we are only instruments in his hands.”

The pope invited priests to continue their ministry during the pandemic with “joy and determination.”

“This is what the Lord wants: experts in the task of loving others and capable of showing them, in the simplicity of small daily gestures of affection and attention, the caress of divine tenderness,” he said.

“Do not be divided, brothers,” he urged the priests and bishops, warning them against the temptation of having “an attitude of a sectarian heart, outside the unity of the Church” amid the isolation caused by the pandemic.

Pope Francis asked the Venezuelan clergy to revive their “desire to imitate the Good Shepherd, and to learn to be servants of all, in particular of the less fortunate and often discarded brothers and sisters, and to ensure that, in this time of crisis, all feel accompanied, supported, loved.”

Cardinal Jorge Urosa Savino, the archbishop emeritus of Caracas, said earlier this month that the pandemic had exacerbated Venezuela’s already severe economic, social, and political problems.

Inflation in Venezuela surpassed 10 million percent in 2020, and many Venezuelans’ monthly salaries cannot cover the cost of a gallon of milk. More than 3 million Venezuelans have left the country in the last three years, many of them on foot.

“The political, economic and social situation continues to be very bad, with runaway inflation and extremely high devaluation, which make us all increasingly poor. The outlook is bleak because this government has not been able to solve the problems of ordinary administration, nor guarantee the fundamental rights of the people, especially to life, food, health, and transportation,” Urosa wrote on Jan. 4.

The Venezuelan cardinal also stressed that “even in the midst of the pandemic, of economic, social and political problems, in the midst of negative personal circumstances that some of us may suffer, God is with us.”

Pope Francis thanked the Venezuelan priests and bishops for their service during the pandemic.

“With gratitude, I assure my closeness and my prayers to all of you who carry out the mission of the Church in Venezuela, in the proclamation of the Gospel and in the numerous initiatives of charity towards brothers exhausted by poverty and the health crisis. I entrust you all to the intercession of Our Lady of Coromoto and of St. Joseph,” the pope said.

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