Latest news with #CanonLaw
Newsweek
22-05-2025
- Politics
- Newsweek
Catholic League Tells Washington to Adopt Church's Law
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Catholic League President William A. Donohue has written to Washington state Senator Noel Frame, urging the state to "follow Canon law" on assisted dying. The letter followed Frame's suggestion that the church could "change their rules" to allow priests to disclose any allegations of child abuse heard during confession to the relevant authorities. Newsweek contacted the Catholic League and the state senator for comment on Thursday via email outside regular office hours. Why It Matters Earlier this month, the state of Washington passed a law requiring clergy to report any suspected child abuse they learn of during confession, a requirement they were previously exempt from for religious reasons. In response, the Archdiocese of Seattle said, "Catholic clergy may not violate the seal of confession—or they will be excommunicated from the Church." What To Know On Tuesday, the Catholic League published the letter Donohue sent to Frame under the title "Washington State Should Adopt Canon Law." In his letter, Donohue cited an interview Frame did with NPR's Dave Miller earlier this month, in which she suggested church law could be amended to match state law. "I am reminded that Canon law has changed many times over the years in the Catholic faith and there's nothing to say they cannot change their rules to allow the reporting of real time abuse and neglect of children. That is within their power to change and I think they should so," Frame said. Donohue wrote in response: "Funny thing is I feel the same way about your state legalizing assisted suicide. Except I would recommend that state law follow Canon law. We the Catholic Church have a theological purpose that is to protect the vulnerable from assisted suicide and that is why state legislators should choose to follow Canon law to protect such persons, as we do not want to be complicit in killing them." The sun rising behind a stone cross atop the historic Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The sun rising behind a stone cross atop the historic Cathedral Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Robert Alexander/GETTY The Catholic League president added: "I am reminded that state law has changed many times over the years in secular society and there's nothing to say they cannot change their rules to follow Canon law and put an end to assisted suicide. That is within their power to change and I think they should do so." The Washington Death With Dignity Act became law in 2008, allowing "some terminally ill patients" in the state to ask for "lethal doses of medication" from health care providers. In April 2023, then-Governor Jay Inslee approved a law that sought to reduce the wait time between when a patient asked for life-ending treatment and when they received it. Frame also told NPR, "We the state of Washington have a secular legislative purpose that is to protect children from abuse and neglect and if faith communities choose through their rules not to protect children from abuse and neglect, we the state are choosing not to be complicit in that choice by their rules." Donohue responded in his letter: "You do not cite one instance where any child has ever suffered abuse or neglect, in any state, because a priest chooses not to disclose what he has learned in the confessional. That's largely because molesters tend not to be the kind of persons who like to 'fess up.' In other words, your bill is only tangentially related to this issue." What People Are Saying Anthea Butler, the chair of the department of Religious Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, previously told Newsweek: "This is about 'the seal of the confessional.' That is, the rule that when a priest hears a confession, it cannot be shared. If it is shared, it's breaking Canon Law. A priest can be excommunicated for breaking the seal of the confessional. "The situation, which the Trump administration is looking at, is interesting because there has always been this collision between the law of the local, state and national level and some aspects of canon law. Think about this not only on this level, but in issues of other types of transgressions, like murder. Terrible situation, but for the priest, they are subject to canon law." The Washington State Catholic Conference, which represents five Catholic bishops, previously told Newsweek: "The Catholic Church in Washington supported adding clergy as mandatory reporters. We have required clergy to report since at least 2002. The church has made several policy changes over the decades to ensure abuse survivors are supported, prevention is emphasized and suspected abuse is reported. We asked for a limited exception for the time a priest is engaged in the Sacrament of Reconciliation, an exception the majority of states with clergy reporting laws have granted. "The state telling the church to change its centuries of practice in the Sacrament of Reconciliation is exactly the type of government intrusion in religion that the First Amendment protects against. It also ignores the current practices and policies of the church that are successfully helping to prevent abuse and ensure reasonable suspicions of abuse are reported to proper authorities. There are many ways to accomplish the states' goal, which we share, of protecting children, that do not require the state to trample on our rights." What Happens Next The Washington law, which is set to go into effect on July 27, has highlighted the national conversation about the boundaries between church and state. The Justice Department has launched a civil rights investigation into whether the legislation violates the First Amendment right to religious freedom.
Deccan Herald
10-05-2025
- General
- Deccan Herald
When words stay and meanings morph
Listening to my colleague Aparna Chaudhuri speak in the Close Reading Room series organised at the university where I teach, I was surprised by the etymological history of the word 'extravagant'. The 'extra', Aparna reminded her audience, meant 'outside' – as a reader of what is professionally categorised as early British literature, that etymological knowledge had given her an insight into reading these literary texts that she said she might not have had otherwise. I can't exactly remember what she said right after because my mind had paused to register what to it was a new understanding of 'out', particularly 'outside'..Returning home, I decided to look it up myself. In the late 14th century, 'extravagaunt' was one half of a phrase – 'constituciouns extravagaunt' – which meant a term in 'Canon Law for papal decrees not originally included or codified in the Decretals'; it had come from Medieval Latin – 'extravagari 'wander outside or beyond', from Latin extra 'outside of' + vagary 'wander, roam''. By the 15th century 'it could also mean 'rambling, irrelevant; extraordinary, unusual'', and, by extension, a 'sense of 'excessive, extreme, exceeding reasonable limits', so that by 1771, it had come to stand for 'wasteful, lavish, exceeding prudence in expenditure'..Given my predilection, I had fixated on the word 'out', how it had found a home in 'extra', and how a word that had emerged from 'roaming, wandering outside' had come to mean what it does to us today – 'wasteful, lavish' and 'more expensive than is reasonable'. This seemingly naturalised passage – and, indeed, lineage – from the outside to something wasteful and expensive bothers me, bothers me in a way the thin eyebrow-fashion of the 1980s does, without consequence. I'm led to wonder about how 'eat out', a phrase that begins to enter the colloquial from the 1930s, would feed or derive from the hidden 'out' in 'extravagant'..Much before health experts would begin using condemnatory language for eating at restaurants, a thrifty temperament would have created this connection between eating outside the house and extravagance. There would have been the impress of another history, more subtle, more muscular – that the world was being miniaturised and brought inside the house: the temple as puja ghar, the nautanki, jatra, bioscope, and cinema as television set, and so on. The outside was not only being made redundant, it was also being ascribed as impure. It wasn't just the reiteration and refurbishing of the 'angel in the house', it was a shrinking of the world that was worth human interest and seeming – and opportunistic – rejection of the outside, with its shifting perimeter, meant that it would soon be exoticised into something inaccessible and therefore desirable. Tourism, far-from-the-madding-crowd, a consumption and production of the outside, the 'outdoors', would first infiltrate into the cramped interior, of living spaces and offices, the mind and the roadsides, so that one would be compelled to seek, in Rabindranath's words, 'space, more space'. That a monosyllabic sound – 'space' – could hold in it everything outside built space feels like a desperate sigh, even a longing as a species for what was once unconditional but is now must be this mammalian recovery of our relationship to the outside that makes us buy tickets, book hotels, put our feet inside ships and sky, and become extra-vagant. For about a century now, but more acutely in this millennium, we've seen this desire afflict literature. The history of early twenty-first century literature will probably be a history of grief and a history of retreat. 'Retreat' enters the language around the 13th century – its life begins by meaning withdrawal, a kind of step backward; in the space of two centuries, it comes to mean 'territory, region of indefinite extent, stretch of land or water'. Notice the word's emerging relationship with the outdoors, so that by the time the 17th century metaphysical poet Henry Vaughan comes to use it in a religious poem, choosing it also its title, it is able to hold in it not just the desire to return to 'angel infancy' but a space that is actually outdoors: a 'shady city of palm trees'..That word today is used for writer and artist residencies, not to mean a return to the 'ancient track' of Vaughan's poem but to mean a space where one can step into a kind of 'outdoor' time or time out of time. The desire is, of course, legitimate, as all such urges are, but I fear that the literature that finds no space or indulgence in such retreats is by the kind of writer who has to actually work outdoors for a living – the working-class writer.
Irish Examiner
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Irish Examiner
Letters to the Editor: Simon Harris backed us but he has U-turned on alcohol warning labels
At our 19-year-old son's inquest in 2011, the coroner determined that his death was 'suicide with alcohol a contributing factor'. The coroner allowed me to address the court, and as a result, our views on alcohol received a lot of media attention. Our views were that it was too cheap, too available, and the country was saturated with advertisements. We gave our support to the passing of the Public Health Alcohol Act. When the bill was passed, the then health minister Simon Harris thanked my wife and I publicly for our input into getting the bill passed. At the time, I had great respect for Mr Harris and his unwavering determination to take on the alcohol industry. In the past few weeks, something really strange happened: first, finance minister Paschal Donohoe called for health warning labels on alcohol, which were due to become law in May 2026, to be shelved. His reason was that with the tariffs on alcohol the labelling would be detrimental to the alcohol industry — which I might add is absolute nonsense. Shortly afterwards, Simon Harris backed him on his stance. To say we are disappointed is an understatement. I find it hard to understand why a man who fought such a sterling battle against the alcohol industry has now become a traitor to what we fought for. Some might think that these are harsh words, but when you consider the time and effort that so many people and organisations put into the passage of the Public Health Alcohol Act and the unrelenting concentrated efforts by the alcohol industry to derail the passage of the bill, I think these words are justified. To try to reverse something that he was instrumental in passing is beyond belief. Mr Harris' words of praise for us are now meaningless, and I'm sure those in the alcohol industry are clapping their hands with glee at his about-turn. John Higgins, Ballina, Co Mayo Jesus in 2025 would welcome women priests I really enjoyed TP O'Mahony's article — 'Scaled-down papacy with women given greater influence in Catholic Church's future' (Irish Examiner, May 5) to be a most compelling read. Mr O'Mahony examines the possibility about a future female Pope. He then poses the question: Is this notion fanciful or fantasy? Canon Law (Canon 1024) states: 'Only a baptised man can validly receive sacred ordination.' The Catholic Church teaches that Jesus chose only men as apostles, a tradition reinforced by Pope John Paul II in 1994. Since the early Catholic Church, no woman has been ordained a priest. I would like to point out the theological difference in the Pontifical Biblical Commission in 1976 where it found nothing in scripture that ruled out women from becoming priests. I believe that it's always important to remember that the early Catholic Church had women in leadership positions. It's a cause of great concern to me that women who espouse their faith today are part of an institution that does not recognise them as equal. We have to remind ourselves that women make up half of the world's population and yet it was patently clear at Pope Francis's funeral, that 50% of the global population was not represented at the pope's obsequies. We seem stuck on the notion of Jesus having chosen 12 men as being the model of selection that we must emulate. It's my contention that the avant-garde Jesus in 2025 would welcome women priests. The Church's fundamental focus is on the Eucharist which is buttressed and undergirded by the consecration, which is the changing of water into wine. It's my humble opinion that it would be within the gift of women priests to perform this sacred ritual. It might not be such a chimeric notion to think that in 30 years from now the presence of women as priests, bishops, and cardinals could well be commonplace. The logical, rational part of me believes the male priesthood is going to stay for now. However with the paucity of clergy, the Church will have to take a serious look at how it will minister to its flock, considering the dwindling number of priests within the Church's ranks. John O'Brien, Clonmel, Co Tipperary What's your view on this issue? You can tell us here Reasons why women cannot be ordained The recent passing of Pope Francis has occasioned the usual comment from the usual quarters about the Catholic Church 'needing to ordain women priests'; views coming from lapsed Catholics or avowed secularists. That being the case, they may be unfamiliar with the reasons why women are not ordained. It is not merely a question of tradition, though 'tradition' comes into it, begun by the founder of the Church, one Jesus Christ. Jesus — as he himself explained, and St Paul and others confirmed — came to Earth to be 'the new Adam' who would undo the disobedience of Genesis Adam, by 'obedience to God, even unto death on the cross' (Philippians 2:8). The Catholic Church believes the priesthood is a continuation of this role, when the Catholic priest celebrates Mass, he does not merely perform a series of ceremonial actions or words, but becomes 'in persona Christi', saying 'this is my body, my blood'. The Catholic Church is thus not free to alter this fact unless God does so — see the Catholic Catechism para 1577. A woman aiming to enter the Catholic priesthood is putting herself forward to take on the role of Jesus, the new Adam, and high priest, in contradiction of the plan of salvation as devised by God. She would therefore be embarking on a career path saying 'no' to the very God she would claim to be serving — hardly an auspicious start to any career. Nick Folley, Carrigaline, Co Cork Conclave countermeasure to zealotry of Trump I am hopeful that the 132 'other' cardinals in conclave were guided by divine intervention of the global need for a homemade countermeasure to the zealotry of Donald Trump. Michael Gannon, Saint Thomas Sq, Kilkenny City What's your view on this issue? You can tell us here Pope Leo will follow in footsteps of Pope Francis America, and the world, has a new Pope, but not the one Donald Trump hoped for himself. Although he was an unexpected choice, he appears to be a very good choice. From what is being reported, Pope Leo XIV will follow in the footsteps of Pope Francis. The Church needs to be all encompassing as its members are more diverse than they used to be. My own Catholic childhood, in the 1960s, of old Irish priests with accents so broad I had trouble following what they were saying, are so long gone. Now we have priests from any country — although in my parish, not from America yet. There are also old tweets from Pope Leo XIV commenting on Trump and Vance, which will make their first meeting interesting. Maybe there will need to be some divine intervention there. In welcoming the Pope to the job and wishing him good luck, I just hope that he will be aware of the truth of the people he meets, as not all great people are good people. Dennis Fitzgerald, Melbourne, Australia Catastrophic genocide in Gaza must be ended The genocide in Gaza is now becoming catastrophic. The warnings by Dr Michael Ryan (WHO), Peter Power (Unicef), and the UN Secretary General António Guterres are being ignored by the Irish Government and by the so-called international community, who have abandoned the Palestinian people, and ignored their responsibilities towards the proper rule of international and humanitarian laws. Too many of these organisations and their leaders are actively assisting or being complicit in the genocide. The UN has been rendered powerless by abuses of the powers of veto. The Irish Government is failing to take all necessary measures to prevent or punish breaches of the Genocide Convention. By allowing the US military to use Shannon Airport, Ireland may be in breach of Article III (e) Complicity in Genocide. Ireland has failed to effectively use its membership of the UN and EU to advocate on behalf of the Palestinian people, and to uphold international humanitarian laws. Its plans to remove the triple lock undermines the role of the UN, and it is failing to process the Occupied Territories Bill in a timely manner. It is too late to save the Palestinian people who have already been killed, or to undo the physical and mental trauma suffered by millions of Palestinians. Up to 100 Palestinians are now dying daily, by Israeli bombs and bullets, and by starvation and diseases due to the Israeli blockade and destruction of medical facilities. Israel plans to expand its military offensive, and to capture and hold the territory of Gaza. Israel prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the cabinet had decided that Gaza's 2.1m population 'will be moved, to protect it'. This expanded military offensive, and ethnic cleansing, is likely to cost the lives of many more Palestinians. This genocide must be ended, and all those responsible for it, or complicit in it, must be held to account as soon as possible, otherwise all of humanity is in danger, as the rule of brute force replaces the proper rule of law. Edward Horgan, Castletroy, Limerick
Irish Independent
09-05-2025
- General
- Irish Independent
Popular Kerry priest Fr Tom recalls his Peruvian connections to the new Pope
While Fr Looney had left Peru before Fr Prevost arrived, they both worked in similar locations throughout their time in the South American nation and for both it had a lasting impact. Fr Looney feels the poverty witnessed by Pope Leo XIV in Peru will influence his tenure as head of the Catholic Church. He said Robert Prevost was very much trusted in crisis-torn Peru given he was Archbishop and a key leader of the Peruvian church there. There was also much political strife in the country throughout his tenure in South America and this experience will stand to him in today's world. "He is man of peace and unity.' "I didn't know him personally. I would have left Peru before he was ordained but I know him through his colleagues.' Cardinal Prevost spent most of his career as a missionary in Peru and became a cardinal only in 2023. During his time in Peru he joined the mission in Trujillo and was director of the joint formation project for Augustinian candidates from the vicariates of Chulucanas, Iquitos, and Apurímac. Over the course of eleven years, he served as prior of the community (1988–1992), formation director (1988–1998), and instructor for professed members (1992–1998), and in the Archdiocese of Trujillo as judicial vicar (1989–1998) and professor of Canon Law, Patristics, and Moral Theology at the Major Seminary 'San Carlos y San Marcelo'. These too were places that Fr Looney spent time in. "I was 10 years in Trujillo – it is the third city of Peru with a lot of poverty,' said Fr Looney. Many of those that Fr Looney worked with down through the years, including Fr Sean O'Sullivan and Fr John B O'Sullivan, would have got to know Fr Prevost during his time. ADVERTISEMENT "At least five or six missionaries from Kerry would have served with him.' Fr Tom, as he is known in Kerry, was also a professor in the Seminary where Pope Leo XVI was professor. "We have a lot of connections. It is unusual that I taught in the college where he later became professor.' In 2014 when Pope Francis appointed Fr Prevost as apostolic administrator of the diocese of Chiclayo, this too was an area Fr Looney knew well and he has strong connections to. The following year, he was named bishop of the city. On September 26, 2015, he was named bishop of Chiclayo and became a naturalized Peruvian citizen before becoming bishop. By 2023 he was promoted to archbishop before this week being elected Pope.
USA Today
08-05-2025
- General
- USA Today
What the pope's papal name could tell us about himself and what's ahead for the church
What the pope's papal name could tell us about himself and what's ahead for the church Catholics around the world are wondering who the papal conclave will elect as pope – and what name the new pontiff will choose for himself, a clue that could hint at the church's future. The new moniker, known as a papal name or a regnal name, is "the first message a new pope sends, even before he speaks," the National Catholic Register says. Popes can take the names of their predecessors or saints 'out of respect, admiration, or recognition,' according to the Vatican News. That can include a desire to follow or emulate the intentions of past popes. Conversely, taking a different or unexpected papal name can signal changes ahead in church doctrine, which is why the name and its historical connections will be analyzed as soon as it's revealed. What names have popes chosen most often? Canon Law doesn't require a pope to change his name. There is, however, one unwritten rule: a pontiff can't take the name of Peter, out of deference to St. Peter, who is traditionally known as the Catholic Church's first pope. John, Benedict, Gregory and Clement are the most favored names taken by popes throughout history. The new pope is expected to explain the reasons why he chose his papal name. More: Praying for white smoke: Papal conclave uses centuries-old method to announce a new pope Whatever name is taken, it will be studied by historians for clues to its meanings and connotations. The 21 legitimate uses of "John," for example, reflect "the richness of the name being associated with the Gospel as well as John the Baptist and John the Evangelist, not to mention John of the Cross and other saints,' the National Catholic Register says. What papal names are never chosen? Besides Peter, other names that have not been taken by newly elected popes include: Andrew. James. Joseph. Luke. Only two popes have taken double names: John Paul I, in August 1978, and John Paul II, who succeeded him in October 1978. SOURCE USA TODAY Network reporting and research; Reuters; National Catholic Reporter; OSV News; Georgetown University; Vatican News; U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops; America: The Jesuit Review; McGill University, Office for Science and Society; National Catholic Register
