Dear Friends,
The decision several months ago for the Archdiocese to stop publishing the Catholic Voice newspaper because of increasing printing costs means that all of us have to work a little harder to get news of happenings in the Catholic Church around the world. One of the responsibilities of a disciple is to care about and pray for the larger church. That responsibility now requires a bit more effort on our part. It is also more difficult because the US Bishops Conference has decided to stop running the Catholic News Service. That decision was financial due to many dioceses no longer subscribing to use the Service.
Locally, you can still receive news from the Archdiocese via your email (if we have your email). You should receive a weekly Flocknote email with local stories. If you have not been getting it, check your spam folder. You can also go to the Omaha Catholic Voice website and see the latest stories. Nationally, there are websites that are balanced in their presentation of the news such as Cruxnow.com and Catholicnewsagency.com. You can also get your news directly from the Vatican. Some of the other websites and blogs out there may tend to have a “side” that they are presenting and you have to take their news with a bit of a skeptical attitude.
Here are a couple news items you might have missed:
In a sit-down interview with Reuters last weekend, Pope Francis said he wants to appoint more women to top positions in the Vatican, including the nomination for the first time of two women to a previously all-male committee that assists in the selection of bishops. These appointments have not yet been made public, and Francis did not disclose who the women are or when their appointments would be announced. However, the committee, currently composed of cardinals, bishops, and priests, typically meets twice a month in Rome to discuss candidates. This decision comes after a new constitution restructuring the Holy See’s central government went into effect last month, stipulating, among other things, that any lay person, man or woman, may lead most Vatican departments. Since he took office, the pope has called for a more “incisive” presence of women in leadership in the church and has advocated for laypeople generally to take on more areas of responsibility.
In response to the decision of the US Supreme Court on the Dobbs case, the Vatican editorial said, “…could provide an opportunity to reflect on life, the protection of the defenseless and the discarded, women’s rights, and the protection of motherhood. It is a topic on which, from the very beginning of his pontificate, Pope Francis has spoken out strongly and unequivocally. In Evangelii gaudium, the document that outlined the “road map” of the current Bishop of Rome, we read: “Among the vulnerable for whom the Church wishes to care with particular love and concern are unborn children, the most defenseless and innocent among us. Nowadays efforts are made to deny them their human dignity and to do with them whatever one pleases, taking their lives and passing laws preventing anyone from standing in the way of this. Frequently, as a way of ridiculing the Church’s effort to defend their lives, attempts are made to present her position as ideological, obscurantist and conservative. Yet this defense of unborn life is closely linked to the defense of each and every other human right. It involves the conviction that a human being is always sacred and inviolable, in any situation and at every stage of development. Human beings are ends in themselves and never a means of resolving other problems.
A serious and shared reflection on life and the protection of motherhood would require us to move away from the logic of opposing extremisms and the political polarization that often—unfortunately—accompanies discussion on this issue, preventing true dialogue. Being for life, always, for example, means being concerned if the mortality rates of women due to motherhood increase. In the United States, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the maternal mortality rate has gone from 20.1 deaths of women per 100,000 live births in 2019 to 23.8 per 100,000 in 2020. And, strikingly, the maternal mortality rate for black women in 2020 was 55.3 deaths per 100,000 live births, 2.9 times the rate for white women.
Being for life, always, means asking how to help women welcome new life. According to one statistic in the United States, about 75 percent of women who have abortions live in poverty or have low wages. And only 16 per cent of employees in private industry have access to paid parental leave, according to a study published in the Harvard Review of Psychiatry on 9 March 2020. Almost one in four new mothers who are not entitled to paid leave are forced to return to work within ten days of giving birth.
Being for life, always, also means defending it against the threat of firearms, which unfortunately have become a leading cause of death of children and adolescents in the US.
We can hope, therefore, that the debate on the US Supreme Court ruling will not be reduced to an ideological confrontation, but will prompt all of us—on both sides of the ocean—to reflect on what it means to welcome life, to defend it, and to promote it with appropriate legislation.”
Peace,
Fr. Damian