1. Lawmakers send Texas-styled abortion bill to Idaho governor, By Keith Ridler, Associated Press, March 15, 2022
Legislation aimed at banning abortions in Idaho after six weeks of pregnancy by allowing potential family members to sue a doctor who performs one headed to the governor Monday.
The House voted 51-14 with no Democratic support to approve the legislation modeled after a Texas law that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed to remain in place until a court challenge is decided on its merits.
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-the-usa/2022/03/lawmakers-send-texas-styled-abortion-bill-to-idaho-governor
___________________________________________________________
2. Indian Court Upholds Hijab Ban in Classrooms, A group of students had challenged the prohibition against wearing them in school, inflaming a national debate over religious and minority rights in the country, By Philip Wen and Krishna Pokharel, The Wall Street Journal, March 15, 2022, 6:59 AM
An Indian court has upheld a ban against wearing the hijab in classrooms in the southern state of Karnataka, weeks after the issue sparked confrontations outside campus gates and stoked religious tensions.
Delivering its verdict on Tuesday, the Karnataka High Court ruled that hijabs—Islamic headscarves—didn’t constitute a part of “essential religious practice in Islamic faith.” It dismissed petitions filed by Muslim students who had been barred from attending classes.
The court ruled the state’s government was within its right to have issued an order enforcing school dress codes, saying it was a reasonable restriction that was permissible under the constitution.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/indian-court-upholds-hijab-ban-in-classrooms-11647341983?
___________________________________________________________
3. Cardinal Pell Calls on Vatican to Correct Two Senior European Bishops for Rejecting Church’s Sexual Ethics, Jesuit Cardinal Hollerich of Luxembourg and Bishop Bätzing of Limburg have both called for changes to the Church’s teaching on homosexuality in recent interviews., By Edward Pentin, National Catholic Register, March 15, 2022
Cardinal George Pell has called on the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to publicly reprimand two of Europe’s most senior bishops for what he said was their “wholesale and explicit rejection” of the Church’s teaching on sexual ethics.
In a statement released March 15, Cardinal Pell asked the Vatican’s doctrinal congregation to “intervene and pronounce judgement” on comments made by Cardinal Jean-Claude Hollerich, the relator general of the Vatican Synod on Synodality, and Bishop Georg Bätzing, president of the German Bishop’s Conference.
Cardinal Pell had made the appeal a few days earlier, in an interview given to the German Catholic television agency K-TV on March 11.
Jesuit Cardinal Hollerich of Luxembourg and Bishop Bätzing of Limburg have both called for changes to the Church’s teaching on homosexuality in recent interviews.
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/cardinal-pell-calls-on-vatican-to-correct-two-senior-european-bishops-for-rejecting-church-s-sexual-ethics
___________________________________________________________
4. 1st German Catholic diocese allows women to perform baptisms, By Associated Press, March 14, 2022, 2:41 PM
The Roman Catholic Diocese of Essen has become the first in Germany to allow women to perform baptisms, citing a lack of priests.
The diocese said in a statement Monday that Bishop Franz-Josef Overbeck tasked 18 lay ministers —17 of them women — with conferring the sacrament of admission into the Church at a ceremony over the weekend.
Until now only priests and deacons — functions the Catholic Church reserves for men — were allowed to perform baptisms.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/1st-german-catholic-diocese-allows-women-to-perform-baptisms/2022/03/14/5cd66b72-a3c6-11ec-8628-3da4fa8f8714_story.html
___________________________________________________________
5. The Supreme Court has declared open season on constitutional rights, By The Washington Post, March 14, 2022, 3:11 PM, Editorial
The Texas Supreme Court on Friday effectively extinguished a lawsuit challenging the state’s antiabortion law, all but ensuring that Texas’s extreme restrictions will remain on the books for the foreseeable future. But do not imagine that Texas’s success, the result of the U.S. Supreme Court’s permissive attitude toward the state’s aggressive legal maneuvers, will affect only pregnant people within its borders — or that the consequences will be limited to abortion rights. The high court’s complacency might open the way for states that seek to restrict constitutional rights of many kinds.
…
Unsurprisingly, lawmakers in at least 12 other states have proposed similar abortion bans.
…
The court should act to close the legal loophole Texas exploited and make clear that it will not tolerate any state seeking to export its abortion policies beyond its borders. Meanwhile, those states that hope to preserve legal abortion must consider how to protect their own abortion providers from punishments that other states might try to impose on them.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/03/14/texas-abortion-law-supreme-court-constitutional-rights/
___________________________________________________________
6. Bishops’ gambit: Have the Germans lost their bet on reform?, By
Ed. Condon, The Pillar, March 14, 2022, Opinion
As opposition to the controversial German “synodal way” solidifies, the country’s bishops seem intent on doubling down in favor of a revisionist ecclesial agenda which has already been criticized by the Holy See.
But with more bishops around the world lining up to express “concern” at their process, the prospect of inspiring a global call for revision to Catholic doctrine seems now quashed, and the process now likely to leave the German bishops isolated, and in danger of breaking communion with the universal Church.
…
The German bishops have gone all-in on the synodal way’s reforming agenda as a means of closing “the gap between the Gospel and the culture,” as Bätzing has called it, and trying to walk back from a demographic cliff face.
The result of all that could be that, even if the global Church lines up behind Rome to condemn their synodal conclusions, the German bishops might face a choice between a Church in schism and no Church at all.
https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/bishops-gambit-have-the-germans-lost?s=r
___________________________________________________________
7. ‘We will not be silenced,’ says UK Catholic activist after Hong Kong jail threat, By Catholic News Agency, March 14, 2022, 9:57 AM
A Catholic activist insisted on Monday that his U.K.-based human rights monitoring group would not be silenced after Hong Kong police threatened him with three years in jail.
Benedict Rogers spoke out on March 14 after receiving a formal warning from the Hong Kong Police Force’s National Security Department regarding Hong Kong Watch, an NGO he founded in 2017 to track human rights, freedoms, and rule of law in the former British colony.
The police said that Hong Kong Watch could incur a fine of HK$100,000 (around $12,800) or its chief executive face three years in jail under the National Security Law that came into force in July 2020. They also demanded that the charity shut down its website.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/250660/we-will-not-be-silenced-says-catholic-activist-after-hong-kong-police-jail-threat
___________________________________________________________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.
|
