1. The pro-life movement’s work is just beginning, By O. Carter Snead and Mary Ann Glendon, The Washington Post, June 29, 2022, 7:00 AM, Opinion
The Supreme Court’s decision to return abortion regulation to our legislative branches is welcome and long overdue. For the culture of life movement, it is also just the beginning. After decades of arguing that our society must do a better job of caring for women, children and families, we now have the opportunity and obligation to prove this advocacy is more than just talk.
Abortion is a gruesome symptom of our collective failure to take care of one another. This means that, alongside our efforts to protect the unborn, we must act decisively to address the wide range of issues — from poverty to lack of support from fathers — that lead women to choose abortion in the first place.
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But, as always, the greatest challenge is to transform the culture. This can never be done at a distance. It requires those who would build a culture of life to extend the hand of friendship not only to families in crisis but also to those who disagree with us and are distressed by the court’s decision. It is only when we show through our actions the goods of unconditional love and radical hospitality at the core of the culture of life movement that we will change hearts and minds. Time to get to work.
O. Carter Snead is director of the de Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture and a professor of law at the University of Notre Dame and author of “What It Means to be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics.” Mary Ann Glendon is the Learned Hand professor of law, emerita, at Harvard University and a former U.S. ambassador to the Holy See.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/29/dobbs-pro-life-women-children/
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2. Pelosi receives Communion in Vatican amid abortion debate, By Nicole Winfield, Associated Press, June 29, 2022
U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi met with Pope Francis on Wednesday and received Communion during a papal Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica, witnesses said, despite her position in support of abortion rights.
Pelosi attended the morning Mass marking the feasts of St. Peter and St. Paul, during which Francis bestowed the woolen pallium stole on newly consecrated archbishops. She was seated in a VIP diplomatic section of the basilica and received Communion along with the rest of the congregants, according to two people who witnessed the moment.
Pelosi’s home archbishop, San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, has said he will no longer allow her to receive the sacrament in his archdiocese because of her support for abortion rights. Cordileone, a conservative, has said Pelosi must either repudiate her support for abortion or stop speaking publicly of her Catholic faith.
Pelosi has done neither. She called the recent Supreme Court ruling removing constitutional protections for abortion an “outrageous and heart-wrenching” decision that fulfils the Republican Party’s “dark and extreme goal of ripping away women’s right to make their own reproductive health decisions.”
https://apnews.com/article/abortion-pope-francis-politics-religion-nancy-pelosi-249a32b2af9de647f1bae94aacb60c6e
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3. Democrats Weigh New Legislation To Counter Ruling, By Siobhan Hughes, The Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2022, Pg. A4
Democrats were wrestling with where to focus their legislative response to the Supreme Court ruling ending federal abortion protections, after Republicans stymied the party’s previous attempts to enact a law guaranteeing abortion access.
Democrats—who control both chambers of Congress and the White House—have tried twice this session to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would establish a nationwide right to abortion before fetal viability, usually around 23 to 24 weeks. But versions of the bill drew too little support to clear the Senate, and some party lawmakers made clear they are now considering other legislation as well.
As some states moved to enforce new bans and restrictions, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said in a letter to colleagues Monday that the Democratic caucus was exploring whether to hold another vote on the abortion bill. She said the party was also looking into measures to protect personal data stored in health apps, which include smartphone apps that some women use to track their menstrual cycles and she said could potentially be used by prosecutors in states where abortion may be criminalized.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/democrats-weigh-new-legislation-in-response-to-abortion-ruling-11656424248?
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4. Some Allies Fault Biden’s Response, By Ken Thomas, Tarini Parti and Andrew Restuccia, The Wall Street Journal, June 29, 2022, Pg. A4
Democrats, including some Biden administration officials, are growing frustrated with President Biden for not mounting a more forceful response to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn abortion protections, as the party works to turn the ruling into a rallying cry ahead of the midterm elections.
The day after the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, Mr. Biden left for a five-day trip to Europe to attend two global summits. In his absence, the administration has struggled to come up with a detailed plan and messaging strategy, with Vice President Kamala Harris and other officials asking for more specificity, according to people familiar with the matter.
With roughly half of U.S. states banning, or moving to ban, many or most abortions, Democrats are pressuring the White House to take more dramatic steps to counter the decision.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/critics-inside-and-outside-white-house-push-biden-for-more-forceful-abortion-response-11656447283?
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5. Pope Francis calls on Catholics to embrace Vatican 2 liturgical reforms, By Inés San Martín, Crux, June 29, 2022
Pope Francis says he believes the clashes over the liturgy currently ongoing in the Church call for Catholics to “abandon our polemics” and “safeguard our communion,” warning that it would be “trivial” to read the tensions present around the Mass as a divergence between taste in favor of one ritual form or another.
In a letter inviting the whole Church to “rediscover, to safeguard, and to live the truth and power of the Christian celebration,” Francis writes that the beauty and centrality of the Mass should not be spoiled by “a superficial and foreshortened understanding of its value or, worse yet, by its being exploited in service of some ideological vision, no matter what the hue.”
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The letter accentuates his cracking down last year on the Traditional Latin Mass, which reversed one of Pope Benedict XVI’s signature decisions of liberalizing the celebration of the old form of the Rite.
https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2022/06/pope-francis-calls-on-catholics-to-embrace-vatican-2-liturgical-reforms
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6. Let the Latin Mass remain in D.C., By Kenneth J. Wolfe, The Washington Post, June 28, 2022, 9:00 AM, Opinion
The Archdiocese of Washington, led by Cardinal Wilton Gregory, might eliminate all traditional Latin Masses in its parishes in D.C. and Maryland, forcing the existing seven public Sunday Masses using the centuries-old rite to merge into one new location, most likely the Franciscan Monastery in Northeast D.C. Among the parishes currently offering Latin Masses is St. Mary Mother of God church in Chinatown, a church that has been offering the traditional Mass since the mid-1980s (and 1845 through 1969), when permission was granted to designate that location for a restored Latin liturgy.
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The sad part in shutting down the traditional Latin Mass at St. Mary Mother of God church is that it would devastate the parish, which has worked hard to help the neighborhood and those in need. People, including me, who were married at St. Mary’s, who served as godfather for baptisms at St. Mary’s and who have volunteered thousands of hours — and contributed thousands of dollars — will go elsewhere. I will go to a welcoming parish that offers a traditional Latin Mass, just like St. Mary’s, but in the Diocese of Arlington. And I will spend my time, talent and treasure there. But I will still be sad every time another D.C. parish closes, as I now know it was likely because of a tone-deaf cardinal who, when invited to a parish he intends to destroy, had absolutely no interest in even visiting it.
Kenneth J. Wolfe has sung in the Gregorian chant choir at St. Mary Mother of God Church in D.C. for more than 26 years.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/06/28/let-latin-mass-remain-dc/
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7. Virginia women’s shelter aims to help pregnant people in crisis, By CBS News, June 28, 2022, Video
A shelter that helps pregnant people in crisis could become more vital after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade. Saint Mary’s shelter in Virginia tells CBS News they opened their doors 16 years ago and have helped hundreds of women.
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/virginia-womens-shelter-aims-to-help-pregnant-people-in-crisis/#x
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8. After Dobbs: Abortion in America by the numbers, By Brendan Hodge, The Pillar, June 28, 2022
Two weeks before the release of Dobbs, the Guttmacher Institute – the research arm of Planned Parenthood – released its latest study on the frequency of abortion in America.
These studies are widely cited by researchers because they use more comprehensive data than the CDC tracking of abortions. The latest release, covering 2017 to 2020, showed that the abortion rate had increased in 2019 and 2020 to level above the historic low of 13.5 abortion per 1,000 women of reproductive age which the study found in 2017.
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The abortion rate in 2020 rate is still fairly low by historical standards: It is lower than the 16.3 rate in 1973 when Roe legalized abortion, and lower than the level just six years ago in 2014, but will be a point of concern for pro-life advocates to see trends moving in this direction.
The largest increases were in mostly in states that already had above average abortion rates:
New York increased from 26.3 in 2017 to 28.8 in 2020 — following the passage of the country’s most expansive state abortion law in 2019.
Illinois increased from 16.6 to 21.3, an increase driven both by state funding for abortions through Medicaid (something which Illinois has provided since January 2018) and also people crossing from other states into Illinois for abortions, particularly Missouri, where the abortion rate fell from 4.0 to 0.1.
Other significant increases in abortion rate were in California, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Michigan, and the District of Columbia.
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All together, the estimates made both by abortion supporters and opponents suggesting that overturning Roe may only reduce abortions by 10%-12% seem fairly accurate.
https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/after-dobbs-abortion-in-america-by
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9. Biden official promises 5 actions to protect abortion after Roe, By Katie Yoder, Catholic News Agency, June 28, 2022, 2:25 PM
The Biden administration is taking five steps to protect access to abortion, according to Xavier Becerra, the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
Those steps, Becerra said on Tuesday, include increasing access to medication abortion and training health workers following the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion nationwide in 1973.
Becerra condemned what he called the court’s “despicable” decision that leaves abortion policy up to each individual state.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/251663/biden-official-promises-5-actions-to-protect-abortion-after-roe
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10. Cardinal says Court decision allowing high school coach to pray a ‘major victory’, By John Lavenburg, Crux, June 28, 2022
Religious liberty advocates are hailing a Monday, June 27, Supreme Court decision that a high school football coach had a constitutional right to pray at the 50-yard line after his team’s games as a landmark ruling for religious exercise in public life.
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The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops had a friend-of-the-court brief filed on its behalf in support of Kennedy on March 2. After the ruling, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York, chair of the USCCB Committee for Religious Liberty, released a statement that “we must always remember the importance of prayer in American life.”
“The freedom to pray is essential to the moral duty all people possess toward the truth,” Dolan said. “The Court’s decision to prevent the forced expulsion of voluntary prayer from public life is a major victory for all Americans who wish to discover and live the truth.”
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2022/06/cardinal-says-court-decision-allowing-high-school-coach-to-pray-a-major-victory
__________________________________________________________TCA Media Monitoring provides a snapshot from national newspapers and major Catholic press outlets of coverage regarding significant Catholic Church news and current issues with which the Catholic Church is traditionally or prominently engaged. The opinions and views expressed in the articles do not necessarily reflect the views of The Catholic Association.
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