A Catholic hospital system in Oklahoma is contesting US federal officials’ demand that it must extinguish an enclosed tabernacle candle in its chapel or lose accreditation and its ability to serve patients.
A Government contractor responsible for accrediting hospitals deemed that it represented a fire hazard.
This is despite the candle being encased in glass, twice over, and topped with a brass cap, firmly affixed to the wall of the chapel.
Church law requires the presence of a lit candle to signify the real presence of Christ in the tabernacle.
Removal of the candle would also necessitate removing the tabernacle and stopping the conduct of mass at the site.
“We’re being asked to choose between serving those in need and worshiping God in the chapel, but they go hand in hand,” said a representative of the hospital.
An art exhibit at the European Union’s Parliament building in Brussels has prompted criticism from politicians in Italy for its display of what they say is a blasphemous depiction of Jesus Christ and the apostles.
The artwork, a series of photographs by Swedish photographer Elisabeth Ohlson, includes one of a man who is meant to represent Christ wearing a white robe and a halo made out of stars above his head. The man is surrounded by seven men who are wearing leather-based fetish clothing.
Ohlson said the photographs are meant to depict Christ supporting homosexual rights.
Some Italian lawmakers took to social media to voice their objections.
“Art?” Italian Deputy Prime Minister Matteo Salvini said in a Facebook post. “No, just vulgarity and disrespect.”
Italian MEP, Jorge Buxadé, called the display “disgusting and miserable” in a Tweet.
The US state of Vermont removed its residency requirement for assisted suicide on Tuesday, officially opening the door for any American to travel to the state to end their life.
Nine other states allow the practice of assisted suicide, but Vermont is the first to actively change its law to strip the residency requirement. Oregon, which also allows assisted suicide, agreed to stop enforcing its residency requirement as part of a settlement to a lawsuit that alleged the requirement is unconstitutional. Advocates of assisted suicide thought it discriminatory.
Vermont had a similar process to Oregon’s. In March, before the Vermont legislature and Republican governor Phil Scott acted in concert to change the law, the state had come to a settlement with a Connecticut woman dying of cancer. She would be the first non-Vermonter to be able to take advantage of Vermont’s assisted suicide law provided she complied with other aspects of the law.
The federal government of Nigeria should establish an interreligious commission to handle atrocities stemming from religious conflicts and persecution, says the Kukah Center.
The policy research institute is founded by Bishop Matthew Hassan Kukah of the Nigerian Catholic Diocese of Sokoto.
The recommendation comes at the end of a 32-page report detailing the latest incidents of kidnapping and violence aimed at the Christian community in Nigeria.
“Christians have been disproportionately targeted both in terms of marginalisation, exclusion, and physical violence,” says the report.
Many Christian communities are becoming “soft spots” for violent attacks because of the “government’s failure to nip the crisis in the bud,” the report says.
“Their susceptibility is worsened with an utter deprivation of basic amenities such as good access [to] roads, potable water, hospitals, schools, etc. Christians are subjected to the Sharia law, mob killings, forceful conversion to Islam, violent extremism, kidnappings, rape, child labor, human trafficking, and other human rights-related abuses. But the various arms and tiers of the government have shown complacency amid the increasing rate of these forms of violations against Christians.”
Surrogacy advocates have called on the Government to allow Irish parents to compensate surrogates financially when having children through surrogacy abroad.
The request to avoid blocking compensation being paid to surrogates was one of three concerns with the legislation raised by IFTS in advance of a Dáil debate on proposed legislation. The group also called for greater protection for Irish LGBTQ+ couples seeking to have children via surrogacy in the form of an amendment to the Government’s proposal of creating a green list of countries.
Sinn Féin politicians will not be given a free vote on potentially major changes to the existing abortion law, according to a report in the Irish Times.
This is despite their Justice Spokesperson, Kerry TD Pa Daly, having campaigned against removing the right to life for unborn children from the Constitution in 2018.
They previously suspended Aontú leader Peadar Tóibín, twice, for his consistent opposition to abortion. Carol Nolan also left the party over the issue.
By contrast, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said that Fine Gael TDs will have a free vote on any changes to legislation, while it is understood Fianna Fáil TDs will also have a free vote.
A Sinn Féin spokesperson said: “Sinn Féin elected representatives are expected to respect policy decisions taken by the ardfheis and to vote in line with party policy.”
A Dutch judge has ordered a “mass sperm donor” who’s already fathered at least 550 children to stop donating.
The man donated sperm in the Netherlands and abroad, including to Danish sperm bank Cryos, but also offered his sperm up via online platforms.
He donated to at least 11 Dutch fertility clinics, which imposed a maximum of 25 children in 12 families per donor, while making false promises that he hadn’t offered his sperm elsewhere and wouldn’t do so in the future. In 2017, it was discovered that he’d already fathered 102 children via those clinics.
The judge ruled that the man “deliberately lied to get parents to pick him as a donor,” knowing full well that they wouldn’t have chosen him if they’d known how many children he’d already helped conceive.
The man claimed he was acting in the interests of prospective parents, who he wanted to help.
Thousands took part in the annual ‘March for Life’ in Dublin City Centre yesterday, which was organised by the Pro-Life Campaign (PLC).
This year’s march was being held in response to the “extreme” recommendations in the review of the State’s abortion law which was published last week.
PLC spokesperson, Eilís Mulroy told the gathering that the Review was so extreme and one-sided that it guaranteed that abortion is now an election issue.
Ms Mulroy described the report as a “travesty and betrayal of women and unborn babies” and criticised the way it “undermines freedom of conscience protections for healthcare workers” and for the way it “misleadingly presents abortion, which ends a human life, as healthcare.”
Aontú leader and TD for Meath West Peadar Tóibín told the crowd: “The number of abortions jumped a devastating 25%, just in the last year. In the four years that the law has been in place nearly 28,500 babies have been aborted. It’s the equivalent of 1,228 classrooms for children. It is the equivalent to the population of Kilkenny City”.
Two in five couples who got married last year opted for a Catholic ceremony, figures from the Central Statistics Office show.
Among mixed-sex couples, Catholic ceremonies were chosen by 42pc (or 9,376), followed by a civil ceremony at 5,767 or 26pc.
The popularity of these two forms of ceremonies has been in decline since 2014, when they accounted for 87% of all marriage ceremonies.
Humanist ceremonies accounted for 9% or 2,053 of all opposite-sex marriages and 17% or 104 of all same-sex marriages in 2022.
Data showed there were 23,173 legal unions during 2022, a rise of 35 per cent on the previous year, when lockdowns and other Covid restrictions were still in force.
Pope Francis has spoken out strongly against abortion and gender ideology during a visit to Hungary, citing both as examples of “ideological colonisation” during a speech.
The pope’s denunciation came during an address to civil authorities and other dignitaries in which he lamented “self-referential forms of populism” and “supranationalism” gaining traction in Europe.
“This is the baneful path taken by those forms of ‘ideological colonisation’ that would cancel differences, as in the case of the so-called gender theory, or that would place before the reality of life reductive concepts of freedom, for example by vaunting as progress a senseless ‘right to abortion’, which is always a tragic defeat,” said the Pope, who is in Budapest for a three-day visit.
“How much better it would be to build a Europe centred on the human person and on its peoples, with effective policies for natality and the family — policies that are pursued attentively in this country — a Europe whose different nations would form a single family that protects the growth and uniqueness of each of its members,” the Holy Father said.
