1. Companies in EU Can Ban Religious Symbols, Clothing As Long As No Groups Singled Out, By Stephanie Bodoni, Bloomberg, October 13, 2022, 5:26 AM
Employers can impose a general workplace ban on religious, philosophical or spiritual symbols, including headscarves, as long as they don’t single out one belief over another, the European Union’s top court said.
Companies that decide to impose such bans can’t differentiate between religions or beliefs, or they risk violating EU equality law, the EU Court of Justice said in a ruling on Thursday.
An employer who prohibits workers “from manifesting, through words, through clothing, or in any other way, their religious or philosophical beliefs, whatever those beliefs may be, does not constitute” direct discrimination, “provided that that provision is applied in a general and undifferentiated way,” the Luxembourg-based EU court said.
The ruling follows on from a similar judgment last year saying that Islamic headscarves in the workplace can be banned provided such curbs are vital to show neutrality in the workplace and don’t single out specific beliefs.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-10-13/eu-bosses-can-ban-religious-garb-if-they-don-t-discriminate
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2. Cardinal challenges Vatican cop over hostage payments, By Nicole Winfield, Associated Press, October 12, 2022, 5:30 PM
The Vatican’s fraud and corruption trial took a dramatic twist Wednesday when a once-powerful cardinal challenged the Vatican’s police commissioner on the stand about one of the more peculiar tangents of the case: the Vatican’s half-million euro payments to a self-styled security analyst who, with Pope Francis’ blessing, helped arrange negotiations for the release of a nun held hostage by Islamic militants.
Cardinal Angelo Becciu made a spontaneous declaration to the Vatican tribunal during the interrogation of Commissioner Stefano De Santis, a top officer in the Vatican gendarmes police force and a key prosecution witness. De Santis was one of the primary investigators in the probe that led to the trial over the Holy See’s 350 million euro investment in a London property venture and related cases.
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De Santis was being questioned about one of the tangents of the London property deal, concerning Becciu’s relations with the security analyst, Cecilia Marogna.
Becciu, who was the No. 3 in the Vatican secretariat of state at the time, has previously told the court that he hired Marogna in 2015 as an external security consultant and subsequently involved her in negotiations to hire a British security firm to negotiate the release of a Colombian nun being held hostage in Mali by al-Qaida-linked militants.
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De Santis told the court that the Vatican gendarmes learned via Interpol in 2020 that Marogna’s Slovenia-based company had received 575,000 euros in nine separate wire transfers from the secretariat of state for purportedly “humanitarian” endeavors, but that the money was being used to pay for cosmetics and other high-end luxury goods.
He said he and the Vatican’s police chief went to Becciu’s apartment on Oct. 3, 2020 at the cardinal’s request and informed him what they had discovered.
De Santis told the court that Becciu begged them to not let word of the Marogna payments get out, saying it would harm him and his family, and offered to refund the money from his account at the Vatican bank.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/cardinal-challenges-vatican-cop-over-hostage-payments/2022/10/12/10cebeea-4a75-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html
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3. Santa Fe Archdiocese files plan for $121M abuse settlement, By Associated Press, October 12, 2022, 2:36 PM
In New Mexico, one of the oldest Roman Catholic dioceses in the U.S. has filed its bankruptcy reorganization plan to compensate nearly 400 clergy abuse survivors with more than $121 million.
A federal bankruptcy judge in the District of New Mexico will hear the Archdiocese of Santa Fe’s plan in a hearing Wednesday, the Albuquerque Journal reported.
The long-anticipated agreement comes nearly four years after the Archdiocese of Santa Fe filed for bankruptcy reorganization to resolve mounting abuse claims that dated back decades.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/santa-fe-archdiocese-files-plan-for-121m-abuse-settlement/2022/10/12/1c10774a-4a5b-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html
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4. Indiana Supreme Court keeps state abortion ban on hold, By Tom Davies, Associated Press, October 12, 2022, 5:13 PM
The Indiana Supreme Court issued an order Wednesday that prevents the state from enforcing a Republican-backed abortion ban while it considers whether the ban violates the state constitution.
The court said in the order that it was taking over appeals of a judge’s decision last month that blocked the law a week after it took effect. It denied a request from the state attorney general’s office to set aside the preliminary injunction and scheduled a hearing on the lawsuit filed by abortion clinic operators for Jan. 12.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/indiana-supreme-court-keeps-state-abortion-ban-on-hold/2022/10/12/58a8b0dc-4a60-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html
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5. North Dakota high court: Judge should revisit abortion order, By Dave Kolpack, Associated Press, October 12, 2022, 4:26 PM
The North Dakota Supreme Court ordered a lower court judge to reconsider his decision to prevent the state’s abortion ban from taking effect pending the outcome of a clinic’s legal challenge.
The state Supreme Court late Tuesday ordered Judge Bruce Romanick to weigh the clinic’s chances of succeeding in reconsidering whether his decision to temporarily halt enforcement of the ban was correct.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/north-dakota-high-court-judge-should-revisit-abortion-order/2022/10/12/95937542-4a59-11ed-8153-96ee97b218d2_story.html
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6. What You Should Know About Notre Dame Professor’s Promotion of Abortion to Students, Notre Dame’s Tamara Kay claims she’s promoting abortion not as a professor but ‘as a private citizen, so that’s been cleared by the university.’, By W. Joseph DeReuil, National Catholic Register, October 12, 2022, Opinion
A professor in the University of Notre Dame’s Keough School of Global Affairs has offered to assist Notre Dame students to obtain abortion pills — against both Notre Dame policy and, until recently, against Indiana law.
Notre Dame officials have sought to dissociate themselves from her statements, but they have done little to prevent her actions.
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At the local level, the actions of the professor, a member of the Keough School of Global Affairs, raises more questions.
Despite Notre Dame being a school dedicated to promoting human dignity and the common good, Kay has loudly demonstrated the failure of this school to uphold the vision of the Catholic Church in both of these matters. Statewide abortion bans will demonstrate more than ever before where deficiencies in early child care and support exist. Notre Dame, the best-financed Catholic university in the country, is ideally situated to set an example of what this support can and should look like.
If, instead, it fails to reprimand professors who present abortion as the only alternative to frightened, under-resourced students at the university, and does nothing to demonstrate how they will help all students who choose life, what hope is there for the rest of the country?
https://www.ncregister.com/blog/tamara-kay-abortion-things-to-know
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7. Lawmakers request information from FBI about pro-life arrests, indictments, By Jonah McKeown, Catholic News Agency, October 12, 2022, 6:30 PM
Republican House and Senate lawmakers wrote Wednesday to the Federal Bureau of Investigation to request information about the recent spate of arrests and indictments of nonviolent pro-life people, contrasting those investigations with the relative silence from the FBI on the many documented arson and vandalism attacks against pro-life entities this year.
In the Oct. 12 letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray, more than three dozen Republican lawmakers asked why the bureau appears to be targeting pro-life people disproportionately under the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act — which is designed to protect pro-life clinics as well as abortion clinics.
“Overzealous prosecutions under the FACE Act weaponize the power of federal law enforcement against American citizens in what should firmly be state and local matters. Further, these abuses of federal power against pro-life Americans based solely on their beliefs undermine the American people’s trust in the FBI,” the lawmakers wrote.
The letter was organized by Texas Rep. Chip Roy and Utah Sen. Mike Lee.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/252533/lawmakers-request-information-from-fbi-about-pro-life-arrests-indictments
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8. Young Catholics must avoid secularism as well as sectarianism, Believers need the intellectual tools to reject both, By Andrea Picciotti-Bayer, The Washington Times, October 13, 2022, Pg. B4, Opinion
As our society becomes ever more contemptuous of religious belief, young Catholics are under pressure not to let their faith go beyond the parish parking lot. At the same time, however, some of our political leaders constantly refer to themselves as Catholic even while they promote policies that are at odds with Church teaching, natural law and the common good — the most shocking example of which is their militant support for abortion.
Young Catholics are quite understandably searching for alternatives.
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What young believers need instead are the intellectual tools to reject secularism and sectarianism, starting with guidance on the Catholic approach to civic engagement. And the first step is to understand the relationship that Christians have with civil society itself.
At the Lecture on Catholic Political Thought sponsored by the Institute for Human Ecology (IHE) at The Catholic University, The Project on Constitutional Originalism and the Catholic Intellectual Tradition and the Thomistic Institute, professor Russell Hittinger, an IHE senior research fellow, boldly outlined this relationship. His lecture, “How to Inherit a Kingdom: Reflections on the Situation of Catholic Political Thought,” drew on the wisdom of many great Catholic thinkers including St. Augustine, on whom Mr. Hittinger is a renowned authority.
“I’m a separationist,” Mr. Hittinger said. “It’s not a slogan — it’s a principle learned from St. Thomas and St. Augustine, who learned it by studying the New Testament.”
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In other words, the Church should not seek to exercise functions proper to secular government nor draw too close to the secular consensus. Christians should engage with civil society as Christians, bringing their deepest beliefs into the public square. In fact, the nation needs Catholics to be “Catholic” more than ever. But our civic engagement should not attempt to subjugate civil society to the authority of the Church.
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Mr. Hittinger‘s lecture was dazzling in its scope; I can’t summarize it in a few sentences, but I was struck by his insight that while Catholics should certainly engage with civil society and work for the common good, they should distinguish between their political endeavors and their theological mission to evangelize.
The lecture is now available, and thoughtful Catholics should reflect carefully on Mr. Hittinger‘s remarkable contribution to our necessary conversation on civic engagement. He has joined other reputed scholars at the university’s IHE as part of a new Program on Catholic Political Thought.
Andrea Picciotti-Bayer runs the Conscience Project and is a fellow at the Institute for Human Ecology at The Catholic University of America — the only national university of the Catholic Church in America.
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2022/oct/12/young-catholics-must-avoid-secularism-as-well-as-s/
__________________________________________________________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. |
