1. Who’s Extreme on Abortion?, By William McGurn, The Wall Street Journal, May 23, 2023, Pg. A15, Opinion
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For 2024, it’s no secret that Democrats plan to use abortion to paint Republicans as extremists. According to the New York Times, the Democratic Party commissioned several surveys post-Dobbs in search of the best messaging on the issue. It found the answer: avoid all details, and characterize Republicans as supporting a national ban.
“Debating weeks is not where we want to be,” Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who conducted some of these surveys, told the Times. “People are terrible at math and terrible at biology.”
The Trump-DeSantis spat over abortion must be viewed in this light. If Mr. Trump wins the nomination partly by maintaining that Mr. DeSantis is too extreme on abortion, pro-lifers may not be as keen to come out for him—especially with Roe v. Wade now overturned. Whatever restrictions Mr. Trump does ends up supporting, moreover, will also be attacked as extreme by Joe Biden’s campaign.
If, by contrast, Mr. DeSantis wins the nomination, Mr. Trump just handed the Biden campaign an attack ad: “Even Donald Trump agrees that Ron DeSantis is too extreme on abortion.”
Now, Mr. DeSantis wouldn’t have signed the law unless he believed he could defend it publicly. That doesn’t mean he will advocate making it national. He is likelier to say: I am a pro-lifer who believes we should be ambitious, but a 12-week ban is where the American people are.
That would help put the focus on Democrat extremism. Democrats argue that the Republican targeting of late-term abortions is misleading, because only 1% of abortions occur in the third trimester.
So why not flip the script and ask Mr. Biden why he can’t agree to a restriction that leaves 99% of abortions untouched? The answer is because no Democratic Party leader can name any abortion he would restrict.
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Constantly we are told—rightly—that Americans want to keep abortion legal but also support limits. Mr. Biden is not for any limits. For Republicans to prevail, they need to break through the protective media barrier and drive that home to the American people.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/whos-extreme-on-abortion-trump-desantis-democrats-late-term-heartbeat-fdfb2f58
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2. Intel tops index of ‘most faith-friendly’ Fortune 500 firms, By Mark A. Kellner, The Washington Times, May 23, 2023, Pg. A7
A public policy advocacy group has named semiconductor chip maker Intel Corp. as the “most faith-friendly” Fortune 500 company.
The nonprofit Religious Freedom & Business Foundation released its “2023 Corporate Religious Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (REDI) Index” on Monday at the group’s annual conference on faith at work. The index tracks “corporate America’s inclusion of religion as an integral part of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives,” and ranks companies on their support of employee religious expression.
The index monitored companies that listed religion on their main diversity webpages, sponsored employee resource groups (ERG), included faith in diversity training, provided corporate chaplains and offered religious accommodation to workers, among other factors.
Following Intel, American Airlines took second place in the REDI Index and data center firm Equinix took third place. Rounding out the top 10 were PayPal and Salesforce (tied for fourth place), Dell Technologies (sixth), AIG (seventh), Tyson Foods (eighth), and Google and Texas Instruments (tied for ninth).
Most of the firms noted for inclusion have set up employee resource groups, in which colleagues can meet to observe religious occasions — for instance, Muslim workers gathering during Ramadan — as well as educate management about spiritual needs.
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https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/may/22/intel-tops-list-faith-friendly-fortune-500-compani/
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3. Pope’s Ukraine peace envoy blasts war as a ‘pandemic’ that affects everyone, By Nicole Winfield, Associated Press, May 23, 2023, 6:30 AM
Pope Francis’ peace envoy for Ukraine, a veteran of the Catholic Church’s conflict-mediation efforts, blasted war as a “pandemic” on Tuesday and said all Christians are called to be peacemakers.
In his first public comments since being named Ukraine envoy, Cardinal Matteo Zuppi called for the creation of a culture of peace to respond to the “deep anxiety, sometimes unexpressed, often unheard, of peoples who need peace.”
The Vatican on Saturday confirmed that Francis had tasked Zuppi with a mission “to help ease tensions in the conflict in Ukraine, in the never-ending hope by the Holy Father, that this can initiate paths of peace.” No further details were released, with the Vatican saying that they were still under study.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/05/23/vatican-pope-russia-ukraine-war-envoy-peace/cb131d4e-f954-11ed-bafc-bf50205661da_story.html
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4. Pope sends Vatican official to Bolivia as abuse allegations escalate, By Carlos Valdez, Associated Press, May 22, 2023, 9:00 PM
Pope Francis has sent one of his top sex crimes investigators to Bolivia at a time when the Andean nation is being shaken by an escalating pedophilia scandal involving priests.
Monsignor Jordi Bertomeu, a leading member of the church’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, arrived in Bolivia on the same day as a former Jesuit seminarian landed in the country vowing to reveal more information about alleged cases of abuse.
The Bolivian Episcopal Conference said Bertomeu’s visit is not directly related to the recent sex abuse allegations but had been planned earlier to analyze “the progress made in the field of the culture of prevention” promoted by the Vatican.
Bertomeu arrived in Bolivia from Paraguay, where he had been investigating similar accusations against church officials and in 2018 he led the investigation into abuses committed by priests against minors in Chile.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/05/22/bolivia-church-abuse-bertomeu-lima/35122028-f905-11ed-bafc-bf50205661da_story.html
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5. Vatican confirms August trip by pope to Lisbon for World Youth Day, including Fatima stop, By Associated Press, May 22, 2023, 7:56 AM
Pope Francis will travel to Portugal for World Youth Day in the first week of August and include a stop at the popular Marian shrine in Fatima, the Vatican said Monday.
The Aug. 2-6 visit is longer than originally expected and covers almost the entire week of the big Catholic rally that St. John Paul II inaugurated to try to invigorate young people in their faith.
Francis is staying in Lisbon for the length of the visit but will make a day trip to Fatima on Aug. 5. Francis previously traveled there in 2017 to mark the 100th anniversary of one of the most unique events of the 20th-century Catholic Church: the visions of the Virgin Mary reported by three shepherd children and the “secrets” she told them.
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/05/22/vatican-world-youth-day-portugal-pope-fatima/41191b9c-f88d-11ed-bafc-bf50205661da_story.html
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6. Los Angeles Dodgers reinstate gay ‘nun’ group for Pride Night award, By Associated Press, May 22, 2023, 9:19 PM
The Los Angeles Dodgers announced Monday that a satirical LGBTQ+ group called the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence will again be welcome at the team’s annual Pride Night, nearly a week after the team rescinded its original invitation.
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The Sisters, a group of mainly men who dress as nuns, is a charity, protest and performance group founded in 1979 in San Francisco. Its Los Angeles chapter was to have received the Community Hero Award.
Last Wednesday, however, the Dodgers announced that they had removed the Sisters from the group of Pride Night honorees, citing “the strong feelings of people who have been offended” by them.
That followed a backlash from some conservative Roman Catholics and politicians, including Florida’s Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio, who accused the group of mocking nuns and the Christian faith.
The group denied it was anti-Catholic. On its website, the group said it uses “humor and irreverent wit to expose the forces of bigotry, complacency and guilt that chain the human spirit.”
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https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/2023/05/22/los-angeles-dodgers-pride-night-lgbt-sisters-of-perpetual-indulgence/93ce8bc8-f901-11ed-bafc-bf50205661da_story.html
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7. Massachusetts panel says child abuse laws should protect transgender kids from parents, By Tyler Arnold, Catholic News Agency, May 22, 2023, 3:15 PM
A Massachusetts government agency is asking lawmakers to review the state’s child abuse laws to ensure they apply to parents who won’t let their children transition from one gender to another.
The Massachusetts Commission on LGBTQ Youth cited a purported rise in transphobia as a reason to amend the state’s child abuse laws. The commission is an official state agency that provides recommendations to lawmakers.
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The commission’s recommendations are part of a growing effort to remove parents from the conversation about whether their children should be socially or medically transitioned into another gender.
Earlier this month, Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, a Democrat, signed legislation that would take authority away from parents with regard to gender transition procedures. The new law allows shelters to withhold information from parents if a child runs away to access such procedures.
Shelters will be allowed to notify the state’s child services department instead of notifying parents.
In some states, the public school system also keeps information away from parents concerning a child’s purported transgender identity.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/254388/massachusetts-panel-says-child-abuse-laws-should-protect-transgender-kids-from-parents
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8. Subverting the Supreme Court, Hardline secularists are confident that, one way or another, they can outmaneuver the highest court in the land., By Andrea M. Picciotti-Bayer, National Catholic Register, May 22, 2023, Opinion
The Supreme Court’s current term will soon come to an end. We’re likely to see victories for a Christian wedding-website designer with traditional views on marriage and a Sabbatarian Christian mailman who cannot work on Sundays.
Progressive politicians and their media allies are getting ready to throw a fit. Their ritualized outrage every time the Court defends religious freedom has become so predictable that it’s tempting to ignore it. After all, the Court has the final say, doesn’t it?
Not so fast.
The more often the Supreme Court protects our religious freedom — and it’s done so fairly consistently in the last few years — the more energy and money the doctrinaire left pours into its attempts to subvert the Court’s rulings. Hardline secularists are confident that, one way or another, they can outmaneuver the highest court in the land. And at least some of this confidence is justified — because, sad to say, they have the federal government on their side.
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The great American abolitionist Wendell Phillips wrote that “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” Unfortunately, it doesn’t come cheap. So be it.
https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/subverting-the-supreme-court
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9. German bishops’ leader: Lay homilies still on the agenda, By Luke Coppen, The Pillar, May 22, 2023, 12:44 PM
The chairman of Germany’s bishops’ conference insisted Monday that the Vatican’s objection to a “synodal way” resolution calling for lay preaching at Masses is not the final word on the matter.
Bishop Georg Bätzing suggested in a May 22 interview that a letter he received in March from Cardinal Arthur Roche, the prefect of the Dicastery for Divine Worship, did not represent a definitive Vatican rejection of homilies by laymen and women in German dioceses.
He said that the letter reiterated what Roche had told the German bishops during their ad limina visit to the Vatican last November, so the bishops were already aware of “this state of affairs.”
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https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/german-bishops-leader-lay-homilies
__________________________________________________________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. |
