A civil rights panel cannot force a battered women’s shelter to admit a trans woman, a federal court in Alaska has ruled.
“Downtown Hope Center serves everyone, but women deserve a safe place to stay overnight,” said lawyer Kate Anderson of the Alliance Defending Freedom, a public interest law practice that represents Hope Center. “No woman—particularly not an abuse survivor—should be forced to sleep or disrobe next to a man. The court’s order will allow the center to continue in its duty to protect the vulnerable women it serves while this lawsuit moves forward.”
U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason, who was appointed to the bench by former President Barack Obama, ruled for Hope Center, saying a civil rights ordinance banning discrimination in places of “public accommodation”, does not apply to homeless shelters because they are not places of “public accommodation.” The judge issued a preliminary injunction against the commission, barring it from bringing enforcement actions against Hope Center while the case continues.
The government of the Australian state of Victoria is introducing legislation aimed at forcing Catholic priests to break the seal of confession to report child abuse.
The Catholic church says that it supports mandatory reporting and encourages victims to report abuse to police, but will not break the seal of confession – regardless of the legislation or the threatened jail-time that would ensue for priests who disobeyed the law. The Catholic Church said that Catholics have an unconditional right to confess their sins to God using the Sacrament of Reconciliation.
“I uphold the seal of confession but I uphold mandatory reporting as well,” Archbishop Peter Comensoli said in August last year, when the state government first flagged this legal change.
“The principle of the seal of confession is a different question. It has a different reality to it. The practicalities of winding back the seal of confession I think is something that can’t be easily done.”
“There’s been no change in our position,” a spokesman for the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne said on Tuesday, adding that it would wait to see the legislation before commenting further.
Priests who refuse to report sexual abuse disclosed during confession will face up to three years in jail under the new laws. The laws will apply to religious and spiritual leaders of all denominations and religions, but will not be retrospective.
Only five priests were ordained in Belgium this year. In the once predominantly Catholic country, the number of newly ordained priests has ranged between three and eight over the last few years.
A new study out of by Georgetown University’s Center for Applied Research in the Apostolate (CARA) found that Belgium has the worst ratio of newly-ordained priests per Catholic head of the population, ranking it 108th in the world.
CARA based the rankings on the most recent figures for priestly ordinations (for 2015, 2016 and 2017) and Catholic population data for 2017 from the Vatican’s Annuarium Statisticum Ecclesiae. In order to avoid skewed results, researchers only included countries that had at least 100,000 Catholics, at least nine ordinations in 2015-2017 and a minimum of one ordination in each of the three years studied.
It found that Belgium had just 19 ordinations from 2015 – 2017, giving a ratio of one ordination for every 431,158 people in its population of 8,192,000 Catholics.
At least 176 children lost either one or both of their parents in the Sri Lanka Easter Sunday bombings, according to the Archbishop of Colombo, Cardinal Malcolm Ranjith.
Of the more than 250 people who died in the bombings in three churches and three hotels in Sri Lanka, 54 were from St. Anthony’s, announced the priest, Fr. Jude Fernando during the service, as armed military personnel guarded the church and frisked all visitors. At least 106 worshippers were wounded in the explosion, he added.
Islamist extremists bombed three churches, including St. Sebastian’s in Negombo (outside Colombo, close to the international airport) and the evangelical Zion Church in the city of Batticaloa in the Eastern Province, several hundred miles from the capital.
On July 21, St. Sebastian’s held their first service since the terror attacks.
In Batticaloa, some injured victims remain hospitalised, some still unaware that their children or spouses have succumbed to injuries, Raghu Balachandran from the National Christian Evangelical Alliance of Sri Lanka said.
Helping victims and survivors deal with their emotional trauma is the biggest need at the moment, but there are few Christian counsellors available, he added.
After the revocation of Kashmir’s special status, Christians in the region are fearful that the change will lead to a wave of Hindu ultra-nationalism and with it, an increase in persecution.
Before the Indian government revoked Article 370 of the Indian Constitution last week, the Muslim-majority region had enjoyed special autonomous status, with its own flag, separate constitution and internal administration.
Many Christians in Kashmir are former Muslims who face pressure within their communities because of their conversion. Now they fear that they will see an increase in persecution under a Hindu ultra-nationalist agenda, Open Doors reports.
There are also concerns that the anti-conversion laws that have made life increasingly difficult for India’s Christians will now be applied to Kashmir.
The laws have been introduced to several Indian states and effectively make it a crime for individuals to convert from the Hindu faith to Christianity, or to seek to persuade Hindus to change their faith.
Hindu radicals are calling to impose the anti-conversion legislation at the national level.
Dr Matthew Rees from Open Doors said: “The tensions in Kashmir are very worrying for religious minorities across India and particularly for those living in Kashmir. This includes the local Christian population, many of whom are from a Muslim background and already experiencing severe pressure from their community. Sources in Kashmir have told Open Doors that they are concerned that this latest development will increase the already high levels of fear amongst the minority communities in the Kashmir. The events in the region make it very clear that no minority in India can expect any level of special protection.”
Women should be able to get the Pill free of charge from their local chemist, according to the Irish Pharmacy Union in order to reduce the number of abortions, despite the lack of evidence that it has this effect.
At present, women need a prescription from a family planning clinic or doctor to be able to buy the contraceptive pill, which costs between €5 and €14.50 per pack. They also have to pay €45 for a appointment every six months to renew their prescription. The initial consultation for the Pill is €60, according to the Irish Family Planning Association. Women who have a medical card can access free contraception.
Access to free contraception for all women was recommended by the Oireachtas Committee on the Eighth Amendment in 2017.
Over the last five years, India has seen an outbreak of religious hate crimes, with an average of one happening every week. While some of them have drawn mass protests, social media outrage, hashtags and even a response from the government, others have gone almost unnoticed.
In April this year, 55-year-old Prakash Lakda, a member of a Christian tribe, was lynched by a mob of Hindu villagers who suspected him of slaughtering a cow in the central Indian state of Jharkhand. Three other tribals from his village were also attacked, leaving them grievously injured.
Now, a police investigation has shown that Lakda’s death might have been as much a result of police complicity as it was of the violent mob. Last week, the investigation revealed how Lakda and the three other victims were ignored by the police for over an hour and a half, as they lay on the street, writhing in pain, after having been attacked for over four hours.
The police, however, have now gone on to charge the three victims on charges of cow slaughter, an offense under local laws that can lead to 10 years of imprisonment, or a fine of 10,000 rupees ( €126). The complaint against them was lodged by the mob that lynched Lakda.
Catholics will suffer more attacks on their local churches, a Tipperary-based priest has warned after Nazi swastikas were painted on a Catholic oratory in his parish. The warning follows three attacks on churches in the midlands as well as numerous other acts of vandalism on religious buildings and statues.
Fr Michael Toomey told the Irish Catholic newspaper that Christians in Ireland are “going to be open to more and more criticism and perhaps sadly attacks” on their churches.
He added that nowadays churches are viewed as public buildings without any sacred quality to them, which leads to people chewing gum and drinking coffee at Mass.
“It is actually the House of God and it’s not that people are being disrespectful deliberately, it’s just the society we live in they see it as just another public building perhaps,” he said, adding that “we need to bring ourselves back to the sacredness of it”.
The Citizens’ Assembly on gender equality will be established by the end of October this year. According to the World Economic Forum, Ireland is already the eighth most gender-equal nation in the world, ahead of countries such as Denmark.
Earlier this month, the Dáil and Seanad passed legislation to allow the electoral register be used to select 99 voters to participate in the assembly which will have six months to complete its work.
The assembly on gender equality will ask members to consider the importance of early years parental care and co-responsibility for care, especially within the family.
Once its work is completed the chairperson, who has yet to be appointed, will report back to the Government with specific proposals on gender equality.
When the decision was formally made by Cabinet last month to establish a citizens’ assembly, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said he wanted Ireland to be the “first country in the world where men and women are truly equal“.
A parish in Longford has been left feeling “violated” after their church was vandalised for the second time in as many years, a parish priest has said.
A stained glass window, depicting the Sacred Heart, over the altar at St Michael’s Church in Shroid was destroyed in the latest attack. Three other plain glass windows were also smashed. The church is one of the oldest in the diocese of Ardagh and Clonmacnois.
Fr Tony Gilhooly, parish priest, voiced his upset: “It would make you cry, really. It is the second time this little church has been vandalised. There was nothing of value, other than sentimental or religious value, to be taken.”
Bishop of Ardagh and Clonmacnois Francis Duffy said it was “not a victimless crime”.
“Vandalism of this kind is profoundly disrespectful to people of faith and to places of worship. It is threatening and distressing. In a truly pluralist society these examples of vandalism are of concern to our whole community.”
An editorial in the Longford Leader called the vandalism “sickening” and a “sad reflection of the society we live in”.
