A federal judge temporarily blocked part of a new Arizona law that would have allowed felony charges to be brought against doctors who performed abortions based only on genetic abnormalities like Down syndrome.

In an order late Tuesday, hours before the legislation was slated to take effect, U.S. District Judge Douglas Rayes said that section of the Arizona law was likely unconstitutional and would make it more difficult for women seeking abortions due to genetic abnormalities to know their rights.

Judge Rayes said it would “place a substantial obstacle” in the way of patients and could hinder their relationship with their doctor. He said few abortion providers in the state perform the procedure later in pregnancy, around the time when a genetic diagnosis could be determined.

The judge also blocked another section of the law that would have allowed anyone who raised or provided funding for such abortions to be charged as well.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/judge-temporarily-blocks-parts-of-new-arizona-abortion-law-11632936417?
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2. Becciu: Money transfers to Australia are ‘classified,’ unrelated to Pell trial, By The Pillar, September 30, 2021

Cardinal Angelo Becciu personally authorized “classified” payments from the Vatican to a company in Australia during 2017 and 2018. The cardinal told The Pillar this week they are unrelated to the trial of Cardinal George Pell, which was underway at the time.

Four international wire transfers, from 2016 to 2017, which total more than AU$2 million, are under investigation by financial authorities in Australia because they raised red flags amid an audit of financial transfers between the two jurisdictions.

Cardinal Becciu’s lawyer on Wednesday told The Pillar that the transfers are “official activities by the Secretariat of State which, by nature, are classified and couldn’t be possibly commented on.”

…

The money was sent to the Melbourne offices of technology and security company Neustar.

https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/becciu-money-transfers-to-australia
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3. Democrats accused of playing politics with abortion hearing, Republicans: Campaign against Supreme Court hurts the public, By Valerie Richardson, The Washington Times, September 30, 2021, Pg. A4

Republicans accused Democrats of playing politics with the Supreme Court during a hearing on Wednesday over Texas’ contested abortion law, which bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected.

Iowa Sen. Charles E. Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Democrats chose to hold the hearing just days before the Supreme Court is set to begin its upcoming term — a term that includes what could be a pivotal case on abortion law.

…

Mr. Grassley blamed left-wing dark money groups and liberal senators who have threatened the justices with reforming the high court if they do not rule favorably for the left.

“This campaign against the Court — and against individual justices — has hurt the public. The dishonest rhetoric doesn’t help the American people understand the issues,” Mr. Grassley said.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/sep/29/senate-democrats-hold-hearing-over-texas-fetal-hea/
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4. ‘Originalist’ Judges Lose Sight of Truths That Precede Law, By Hadley Arkes, The Wall Street Journal, September 30, 2021, Pg. A17, Opinion

The Supreme Court opens its new term Monday with six nominal conservatives appointed by Republican presidents. But conservatives have been shaken in their confidence that those six will yield majorities on issues that deeply matter. That declining confidence comes along with a serious argument within the conservative family over the nature of “conservative jurisprudence.” Conservatives are united in taking as our coordinates the original meaning of the text of the Constitution. But some of us have argued for “a better originalism,” as opposed what we call the “truncated originalism” that has predominated. We see the latter as detached from the understanding that the American Founders, the true originalists, had of the moral ground of the Constitution and laws they were shaping.

…

In Roe v. Wade (1973), the lawyers defending the abortion laws of Texas drew on the most updated data from embryology, woven with principled reasoning, to show that the offspring in the womb had been nothing other than human from its first moments, that it was never merely a part of the mother. These lawyers acted, we might say, “naturally”: they sought to show why the laws of Texas were “justified” in casting their protections and displacing the personal freedom of a woman to destroy that small human being who was uniquely vulnerable to her care—and her power.

But none of that rich material made its way into the dissenting opinions by Justices Byron White and William Rehnquist, who were content to rely on the point that abortion was nowhere mentioned in the Constitution. If that is all the court can say—if there is no recognition of a child in the womb as a human life—then why would any state be justified in barring a pregnant woman from being rid of it? And why should she lose that freedom if she travels to another state? But if that offspring is never anything less than a human being, why should the court not engage the power it has used in the past when the protections of the law were withdrawn from a class of human beings and citizens within the separate states? A court that can’t settle its judgment here is simply giving us another chapter in a continuing story of incoherence.

Mr. Arkes is a professor of jurisprudence emeritus at Amherst College, founder/director of the James Wilson Institute on Natural Rights and the American Founding.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/originalist-judges-truths-precede-law-textualism-supreme-court-abortion-marriage-11632931440?
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5. Vatican megatrial to resume amid push for financial reform, By Elise Ann Allen, Crux, September 30, 2021

With the final embers of summer waning, the resumption of the Vatican’s megatrial is drawing near, featuring several big players indicted for financial crimes amid Pope Francis’s broader reform efforts.

Over the summer the Vatican announced a swath of indictments against 10 people, including the once-powerful Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who for years was one of the most influential Vatican officials, and who now finds himself to be the first person with a red hat to stand trial in the Vatican tribunal.

An initial trial date was set for July 27, however, during that hearing, proceedings were postponed until Oct. 5, after the summer break.

The indictments were the culmination of a two-year investigation into a shady investment in a swanky London property which ended up losing the Vatican millions in bad investments and fat fees to brokers, among other things.

https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2021/09/vatican-megatrial-to-resume-amid-push-for-financial-reform/
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6. Pope Francis to young climate activists: ‘Technical and political solutions are not enough’, By Catholic News Agency, September 29, 2021, 8:00 AM

Pope Francis urged young climate activists on Wednesday to recognize that “technical and political solutions are not enough” to foster harmony between people and the environment.

In a video message to the Youth4Climate event in Milan, Italy, on Sept. 29, the pope highlighted the importance of education and individual responsibility.

He said: “Technical and political solutions are not enough if they are not supported by the responsibility of each member and by an educational process that favors a cultural model of development and sustainability centered on fraternity and on the alliance between human beings and the environment.”

“There must be harmony between people, men and women, and the environment. We are not enemies: we are not indifferent. We are part of this cosmic harmony.”

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/249127/pope-francis-to-young-climate-activists-technical-and-political-solutions-are-not-enough
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7. Pope Francis: ‘My intuitions, my perceptions and my spirituality’ come from Vatican II, By Hannah Brockhaus, Catholic News Agency, September 29, 2021, 9:00 AM

Pope Francis has reflected on the importance of the Second Vatican Council and the influence of its teachings on his life and spirituality.

In a new book preface, published Tuesday, the pope said that for him and other young Jesuit priests in Latin America, Vatican II “had entered into our way of being Christians and of being Church and, in the course of my life, my intuitions, my perceptions, and my spirituality were naturally generated by the suggestions of the doctrine of Vatican II.”

“There was not so much need to cite the texts of the Council,” he said.

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/249128/pope-francis-my-intuitions-my-perceptions-and-my-spirituality-come-from-vatican-ii
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