The Religious Sisters of Charity have confirmed they are gifting land to a new healthcare trust so that the new National Maternity Hospital can be built there. The hospital will be performing abortions under the liberal Irish law. The announcement comes after they received approval from the Holy See to relinquish the property.
St Vincent’s hospital, also at the Blackrock, Co Dublin site, will also be transferred to the trust.
The body is a new, independent, charitable body to be called St Vincent’s Holdings CLG. The new company will be a “not for profit” organisation. The company has stated that it will not be subject to any religious influence and will not have any Board members drawn from religious bodies.
In July 2017, the Religious Sisters of Charity stepped down from the Board of St Vincent’s Healthcare Group. In a statement, the Sisters said, “In 1834, Mary Aikenhead, Foundress of the Religious Sisters of Charity established the first hospital in Ireland that freely admitted the sick and the poor, irrespective of their race, creed or ability to pay”.
“Today, marks the final movement towards completion of all legal, financial and regulatory matters involved in the transfer of the Sisters’ 186-year involvement in the hospital”.
The National Maternity Hospital spokesman said the hospital was “hugely appreciative of the role played by the Sisters of Charity in healthcare in Ireland over two centuries, culminating in the release of these hugely valuable healthcare assets”.
The British government have withdrawn controversial abortion regulations for Northern Ireland before they could be put to the vote in Parliament this week.
It means that the regulations put forward by secretary of state Brandon Lewis at the end of March will not now apply.
He had been required to submit the regulations for Parliament’s approval but in the face of mounting opposition the government said the votes would now not go ahead.
The Northern Ireland Office is expected to submit redrafted regulations to Parliament in the near future.
Opponents had criticised the regulations for going further than the abortion laws in Britain and the Republic, with much wider provision than the law required.
It is understood that the strength of the challenges faced by the proposed legislation, in particular at a Lords select committee, led the government to pull the regulations.
The Catholic bishops had called the regulations “extreme” and accused the Westminster government of removing “protections to the life of the unborn child with chilling alacrity”.
The Italian government has announced that the public celebration of Mass will resume from May 18 under new social distancing and hygiene rules. This comes after a long negotiation between the Bishops’ Conference (CEI) and State representatives.
Originally when Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte presented the details of “Phase 2” of the lockdown beginning May 4, no date for the return of public masses was announced. During a TV briefing on April 26th, Mr Conte explained that only funerals with no more than 10 people in attendance would be permitted in a church.
That same evening the Italian Bishops’ Conference strongly protested. “We remind the Prime Minister and the Technical-Scientific Committee the duty to distinguish between their responsibility, which is to give precise indications about health matters, and that of the Church, which is called to organise the life of the Christian community, following the measures which have been established but also in fullness of its own autonomy. The Italian Bishops cannot accept seeing freedom of worship being compromised. It should be clear to everyone that the commitment to serving the poor, which is so significant during this emergency, stems from a faith that must be nourished at its sources, especially the sacramental life”, they said in a press release.
On the following day, Mr Conte replied that the negotiation was still ongoing. On Thursday last the approved protocol for public masses was presented in a joint briefing by Prime Minister Conte and the CEI President, Cardinal Bassetti.
People who attended religious services at least once a week were significantly less likely to die from “deaths of despair,” including deaths related to suicide, drug overdose, and alcohol poisoning, according to new research led by Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
After adjusting for numerous variables, the study showed that women who attended services at least once per week had a 68 percent lower risk of death from despair compared to those never attending services. Men who attended services at least once per week had a 33 percent lower risk of death from despair.
The study authors noted that religious participation may serve as an important antidote to despair and an asset for sustaining a sense of hope and meaning. They also wrote that religion may be associated with strengthened psychosocial resilience by fostering a sense of peace and positive outlook, and promoting social connectedness.
“These results are perhaps especially striking amidst the present COVID-19 pandemic,” said Ying Chen, research associate and data scientist at the Human Flourishing Program at Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, and first author of the paper. “They are striking in part because clinicians are facing such extreme work demands and difficult conditions, and in part because many religious services have been suspended. We need to think what might be done to extend help to those at risk for despair.”
Just under half of UK adults (44%) saying they pray, and among those who pray a third (33%) say that they have prayed since the COVID-19 lockdown because they believe it makes a difference, according to a new nationwide poll of 2,101 UK adults by Savanta ComRes1 for Christian relief & development agency Tearfund.
With churches being closed due to restrictions on social gatherings, thousands of churches are streaming their services online. A quarter (24%) of UK adults say they have watched or listened to a religious service since lockdown (on the radio, live on TV, on demand or streamed online), this jumps to three quarters (76%) amongst regular churchgoers. One in twenty UK adults (5%) who say they have watched or listened to a religious service since lockdown have never gone to church.
A third (34%) of UK adults aged 18-34 say they have watched or listened to a religious service since lockdown (on the radio, live on TV, on demand or streamed online) this compares to one in five (19%) adults aged 55+.
While some may view religion as more appealing to the older generation, the research shows that younger adults aged 18-34 are significantly more likely to say they pray regularly (at least once a month) than adults aged 55 and over (30% vs. 25%).
A call has been made for the Catholic Church in Ireland to present a credible roadmap to civil authorities for the commencement of public Masses.
An editorial in the Irish Catholic newspaper says the closure of churches for worship is draconian and the timeframe of starting public Masses on July 20 lacks ambition.
“Are we really to believe that churches must wait for weeks and weeks after libraries and restaurants for some semblance of normality to return? The answer is ‘no’ and Church leaders must lobby the Government for a timeframe that is realistic, ambitious and keeps public health to the fore,” it says.
The paper adds that it is not appropriate to leave this entirely in the hands of well-meaning public officials many of whom may be unfamiliar with the patterns of liturgy and Church life.
The worldwide order of the Brothers of Charity have cut ties with 15 care homes of theirs in Belgium after the Vatican stripped the institutions of their Catholic status because euthanasia was permitted on their premises.
Brother Rene Stockman, superior general of the Brothers of Charity, the order that founded the homes, said this week that the brothers had “no choice but to remain faithful” to their “charism of charity, which cannot be reconciled with the practice of euthanasia on psychiatric patients.”
The centres were managed by the Provincial Association of the Brothers of Charity in Belgium.
In March 2017, the association announced it would implement Belgian law on euthanasia, which includes the killings of patients with “unbearable” psychiatric conditions.
The policy conflicted with both the public position on euthanasia of the Brothers and also of the Belgian bishops, and the association was asked to change it but refused.
The Brothers of Charity was founded in 1807 in Ghent, Belgium, with a charism especially to serve the elderly and the mentally ill. They also operate in Ireland providing extensive services to people with intellectual disabilities, with annual funding from the HSE.
A challenge to a Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) banning prayer around an abortion facility in the London Borough of Ealing, will be submitted to the European Court of Human Rights.
Introduced in April 2018, the Order criminalises activities including silent prayer and charitable offers of help. Alina Dulgheriu, a young mother who herself received help from pro-life volunteers, argues that the Order violates the fundamental rights to freedom of speech, assembly, and religion.
Ryan Christopher, Senior Policy Officer for ADF International based in London called the order disproportionate and a serious threat to fundamental freedoms.
“It sets a worrying precedent and outlaws even the most compassionate offer of assistance as well as silent prayer. In a free society, the authorities do not simply criminalise speech with which they disagree. Evidence shows that hundreds of women – like Alina – have accepted the help offered by peaceful pro-life groups outside abortion facilities,” he said.
Modern society is formulating an “anti-Christian creed” and punishing those who resist it with “social excommunication,” Emeritus Pope Benedict XVI has said in a new biography, published in Germany on May 4 this week.
In a wide-ranging interview at the end of the 1,184-page book, written by German author Peter Seewald, the pope emeritus said the greatest threat facing the Church was a “worldwide dictatorship of seemingly humanistic ideologies and to contradict them constitutes exclusion from the basic social consensus.”
He continued: “A hundred years ago, everyone would have thought it absurd to speak of homosexual marriage. Today whoever opposes it is socially excommunicated. The same applies to abortion and the production of human beings in the laboratory.”
“Modern society is in the process of formulating an ‘anti-Christian creed,’ and resisting it is punishable by social excommunication. The fear of this spiritual power of the Antichrist is therefore only too natural, and it truly takes the prayers of a whole diocese and the universal Church to resist it.”
A woman is taking the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) to court after an abortion provider did not inform her that a baby at 23 weeks’ gestation may feel pain and that her unborn child had a chance of surviving outside the womb at the time of her abortion.
Anna-Maria Tudor, 32, had an abortion at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS) clinic in Richmond, London and has outlined that she was never told her unborn baby might suffer during the abortion procedure.
Mrs Tudor from Newcastle told the Mail on Sunday, “I did not find out a baby at 23 weeks might be able to feel pain until afterwards. It made me feel awful and I now deeply regret my decision.
Ms Tudor has taken NICE to the High Court and is seeking a declaration that current NICE guidelines, which do not require women to be informed of the potential for foetal pain, are unlawful.
Current guidance for abortion providers relies on a 2010 review by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) that claims that the unborn baby is in an unconscious state and does not reach consciousness until birth.
But two medical researchers, including a ‘pro-choice’ British pain expert who used to think there was no chance unborn babies could feel pain before 24-weeks, say recent studies strongly suggest the assumption is incorrect.
