Severe restrictions on indoor worship services because of COVID-19 protocols has meant the most basic religious freedom, the right to worship, was being “unjustly repressed”, according to the Catholic archbishop of San Francisco.
Writing in The Washington Post, Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone said that for months now, the city of San Francisco has limited worship services to just 12 people outdoors, while worship inside churches is banned.
The city recently announced it will allow 50 for outdoor worship, with a goal of permitting indoor services up to a maximum of 25 people by October 1st, less than 1 per cent of the capacity of the city’s Catholic Cathedral.
“This is not nearly enough to accommodate the hundreds of thousands of Catholics in San Francisco,” he added.
The archbishop’s op-ed came a few days after he called on parishes to hold eucharistic processions to the main square in front of the City Hall “to witness to the city that faith matters.”
After reaching the plaza, the entire group will process together to the Cathedral of St Mary of the Assumption for the celebration of multiple outdoor Masses. Participants will be wearing masks and following “proper social distancing,” he added.
He also asked priests to encourage all of their parishioners to go to the website FreeTheMass.com and sign a petition calling on San Francisco mayor London Breed to lift her “unfair restrictions” (over 3,500 people signed it the first week it was posted); and to display prominently at their churches a banner with the motto “We Are Essential: Free the Mass!”
An assisted suicide bill has been described as a massive change to law and culture that would impose upon doctors the task of killing adult life for the first time ever.
Aontú Leader Peadar Tóibín has called for an honest, open and fair debate on the so-called “Death with Dignity Bill” of Socialist TD, Gino Kenny, that was introduced in the Dáil on Tuesday.
The Meath West TD said the bill would make it legal for one person to kill another. “Once this Rubicon has been crossed as in other countries, they have found it impossible to limit the further broadening of criteria for the ending of life”.
He said countries such as Canada, Netherlands and Belgium initially introduced assisted suicide for a small number of really difficult cases but have now seen the numbers increase nine and 10-fold. Likewise, while this Bill sets 18 years as the minimum age to avail of Assisted Suicide, “In countries that have made the major cultural change the age limit has been dropped to include children. Belgium did this and children as young as 9 and 11-year-old have been killed”.
He added that in countries that have introduced Assisted Suicide pressure starts to grow on older people and people with severe disabilities.
It likewise makes it harder to reduce suicide rates. “How can a country tell people that suicide is never the right decision when it makes it legal and says to some people that it is the right decision”.
The taxation benefits of married couples might be extended to cohabiting partners according to the latest report of the Department of Finance’s Tax Strategy Group.
The September 2020 document notes that married couples enjoy the same rate bands as two single persons. They also retained the ability to transfer some tax credits, something that is not available to non-married couples as the Constitutional protection of Article 41.3.1° does not extend to non-married couples.
“Due to changes in societal norms in Ireland, for example, non-traditional family structures becoming more common and a slightly decreasing trend in marriage rates,” the authors write, “it is worth considering the issues around extending the tax treatment currently only available to married couples to co-habiting couples”.
“In the event that the tax treatment of married couples was to be extended to cohabiting couples, consideration would need to be given to the practicalities that would arise for Revenue if they were to administer such a system.”
“Married couples and civil partners have an independent, verifiable and legally binding confirmation of their marital status, including the dates of commencement and cessation of same. In order to administer a credit for cohabiting couples, Revenue would require a similar standard of verification of their status”.
An Australian study has found no statistically significant difference between the literacy and numeracy scores of school children who had attended preschool or childcare and children who had not.
The research also found the duration of preschool or childcare attendance had no impact on later literacy and numeracy scores.
Published in the journal Behavior Genetics, the study looked into whether attending preschool or childcare influences later academic achievement.
The authors used data from the Academic Development Study of Australian Twins, which has been following children since 2012 to investigate how genes and environments influence their literacy and numeracy abilities in primary and secondary school.
The Vatican expects to renew its interim deal with China on the appointment of bishops, Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin said Monday.
“With China, our current interest is to normalise the life of the Church as much as possible, to ensure that the Church can live a normal life, which for the Catholic Church is also to have relations with the Holy See and with the Pope,” Parolin said on Monday, according to Italian news agency AgenSIR.
“Our perspective is on this ecclesiastical theme,” Parolin added, noting that this goal should also take place “against a backdrop of peaceful coexistence, the search for peace and overcoming tensions.”
Responding to questions, Parolin also said the Vatican’s intention “is that [the deal] be prolonged, that we continue to adopt it ad experimentum.”
“If there is the same intention on their part too? I think and hope so,” he said, calling the results of the two-year provisional agreement “not particularly exciting.”
That’s according to a survey conducted in July and August by the Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate. Another 51 percent say they will return to their normal pattern of attendance after the pandemic, and 14 percent said they plan to go to Mass more often.
2,214 self-identified Catholics between the ages of 18 and 35 were surveyed. A quarter said they participated in Mass online or on television during the pandemic “somewhat” or “very” often. Another 22 percent said they watched Mass “a little,” and 54 percent said they had not watched at all.
A major correction has been issued by the American Journal of Psychiatry that neither “gender-affirming hormone treatment” nor “gender-affirming surgery” reduced the need of transgender-identifying people for mental health services.
The authors and editors of an October 2019 study, titled “Reduction in mental health treatment utilization among transgender individuals after gender-affirming surgeries: a total population study,” have retracted its primary conclusion. Letters to the editor by twelve authors led to a reanalysis of the data and a corrected conclusion stating that in fact the data showed no improvement after surgical treatment.
Catholic primary schools in the greater Dublin area are to end the practice of giving priority enrolment to siblings of pupils currently attending school.
Schools who operate “sibling-first” enrolment policies say they have been instructed by the archdiocese of Dublin to give parity to all children in the local catchment area alongside children of siblings.
The revised policies are due to be signed off by the archdiocese this month, and will come into effect for children enrolling in the 2021/22 school year.
A spokeswoman for the archdiocese said that its school enrolment policies do not permit over-subscribed schools to prioritise siblings of current pupils only. She said this did not represent a change in the policy of the archdiocese, and these policies had been in place for many years.
However, several schools confirmed to The Irish Times that they have operated sibling-first enrolment policies for years with no objection until now.
The principal of one Catholic school said: “There will be uproar among parents when this comes out. It means that families risk being split up. It undermines the sense of school community.”
The Catholic Church has accused the SNP of trying to prevent individuals who oppose abortion and gender reform plans from being selected for next year’s Scottish Parliament election.
Anthony Horan, director of the Catholic Parliamentary Office in Scotland, claimed that there had been “open and vicious hostility” shown to party members who opposed abortion. He alleged that SNP officials were prepared to act against colleagues on the basis of their religious convictions, a claim that the party strongly rejects.
Mr Horan cited the case of Lisa Cameron, the MP for East Kilbride, Strathaven & Lesmahagow, who received “a significant degree of virtual and actual hostility for her belief in the right to life of the unborn, including calls by some for her deselection”.
Mr Horan raised doubts about the reassurance that the church received at that time after it raised concerns with Nicola Sturgeon. He said: “Alarmingly, recent reports suggest that religious affiliation, pro-life beliefs and the belief that gender is not fluid and changeable may lead to some individuals being excluded from the SNP candidate selection process ahead of next year’s Scottish parliament elections.
More than 100 British lawmakers signed a letter to the Chinese ambassador Wednesday condemning what they described as “a systematic and calculated programme of ethnic cleansing against the Uighur people” in China’s far western Xinjiang region.
“When the world is presented with such overwhelming evidence of gross human rights abuses, nobody can turn a blind eye,” said the cross-party letter, which was signed by 130 lawmakers.
The letter referred to reports of forced population control, including coerced sterilisations and abortions, mass detention of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang, as well as video apparently showing a large number of blindfolded and shaven men waiting to be loaded onto trains. The lawmakers said the video bore “chilling” similarities to footage of Nazi concentration camps.
