State limits on religion reach a new high

State restrictions on religion are at the highest level ever, according to a new world-wide study.

The Pew Research Center, a non-partisan social science institute, has monitored religious freedom since 2007. Their latest report found that the interference of government in religious activities is at a new peak. In 2019, the last year for which data are available, governments have intensified their interference on religious worship and also increased their harassment against religious groups.

This is before the Covid-19 pandemic that saw many states suspending or limiting religious worship for health reasons, Ireland being one of the most restrictive.

State restrictions monitored by the Pew Research Center include legislation, policies and actions that impinge on religious beliefs and practices. Generally, limit or ban worship, conversions or expression of religious beliefs in public.

The study covers 198 states and territories. The countries with the highest levels of State restrictions are in the Asia-Pacific region or in the Middle East-North African region. Forty-four out of 70 countries in those two regions have a “high” or “very high” levels of limitations involving religion.

In 2019, 180 countries in the world had at least one instance of Government harassment against religious groups, compared with 175 countries in 2018. This can range “from verbal intimidation to physical violence motivated at least in part by the target’s religious identity”, according to the report.

In Europe, restrictions often involve the display of sacred symbols and religion-inspired clothing in public, such as wearing full-face covering on the streets or headscarves in schools. Countries such as France or Austria have severe laws about what it is permitted to wear in public or in schools.

Government use of force against religious groups, instead, is more common outside of Europe, mainly in China, Burma, Sudan and Syria, according to the study. The use of force would include arrests, property damage and even killings. The most extended of such violations affect the Uyghur Muslims in the Chinese province of Xinjiang.

The Pew Research Centre study also found that hostility from society -rather than from government- has decreased in recent years. Hostility against religious believers from individuals or from groups reached its peak in 2012, when 33pc of countries had a “high” or a “very high” level. In 2019, 22pc of the countries included in the study had this same level. This change is partially related to the fact that, compared with the previous years, in 2019 less countries experienced religious motivated terrorism.

Christians and Muslims experienced harassment in more countries than other religious groups in 2019. This is also because they are the largest and the most widely dispersed religious groups in the world.

In 2019, harassment of Christians was reported in 153 countries, up from 145 countries in 2018. The share of countries where Christians were harassed increased in sub-Saharan Africa and in Europe from 2018, while it generally stayed the same in the rest of the world.

Of the 20 countries in the Middle East-North Africa region, 19 had some form of harassment, either by governments or social groups, targeting Christians.

In every region included in the study, Christians experienced government harassment in more countries than they did social harassment.

A harsh light is shone on the fertility industry

Historically speaking, the fertility industry has often been like the Wild West, totally unregulated with doctors often abusing their power and the hopes of people to bring children into the world with little or no knowledge of their natural origins.

The Guardian newspaper has a long article which lists many of the abuses. It is a searing read. Among other things, it catalogues doctors who used their own sperm to impregnate women seeking to conceive without informing them of its origin.  Sometimes the sperm of men who gave samples for testing was used in the IVF process with other couples without ever telling them.

The article tells the story of a British fertility clinic led by an obstetrician who secretly used the sperm of her own husband, generating at least 600 children. It mentions other similar cases where the doctors running such clinics fathered dozens of babies, deceiving the couples who were seeking help to conceive.

We learn about “Catherine” who found her biological father using a DNA matching website. He was shocked to find he was her father because he never donated sperm to the clinic.  He and his wife had difficulty in conceiving and went to the doctor only for a fertility check which involved him leaving a sample. It is possible that from his stolen sperm dozens of children have been produced by the clinic and obviously those people are not aware of their origin.

“They were playing with people’s lives at the clinic,” Catherine says. “I have been cheated. My biological father has been cheated. My parents have been cheated.”

The article also interviews a man who donate regularly to the clinic and is likely to have fathered hundreds of children but he hasn’t put his DNA on a database so that he can be found.  “At the time, I don’t think any of us gave it a thought. The prime purpose was getting money”, he said.

Gamete donation was anonymous in the UK until 2002 when Dr Joanna Rose, also who features in the article, won a landmark case in the British courts that brought an end to this practice.

Dr Rose, who is still trying to identify her biological father, is a campaigner for people conceived from donation and she has addressed the Iona Institute in the past.

In Ireland, the fertility industry is largely unregulated, and we do not know if similar practices have taken place here. In 2017 Simon Harris, who was then Minister for Health, published the General Scheme of the Assisted Reproduction Bill. After four years, due to the complexity of the issues involved, but also to the resistance to regulation coming from fertility clinics, the Bill is still being drafted.

Joanna Rose wrote a submission on the Bill on behalf of the Iona Institute that can be read here.

Among other things, the General Scheme allows donation from family members who are not related by blood to the recipient. A woman, for instance, can use the sperm of her brother-in-law, and so the child’s uncle in reality would be its biological father. This type of things is already happening in Ireland.

Since last year, anonymous gamete donation is banned in Ireland but details of the donor, which are kept in a National Register, can be requested only after the child turns 18. Those identifying details are not mentioned in the birth certificate and so some donor-conceived people will never know.

Donors are generally from abroad and it will be difficult, after 18 years or more, to establish any significant relationship with them. Moreover, donors can refuse to provide information for safety reasons.

Some of the fertility clinics here want to return to the practice of anonymous egg and sperm donation.

This year, the Rapporteur on Child Protection recommended lowering the request age for donor information to 12 years, with no allowance to withhold information. That would be a small improvement on the present situation, but the question remains: how is it in the interest of children to be deliberately estranged from their genetic mother or father, and possible siblings? The scandals portrayed in the Guardian articles confirm that the natural ties are still important.

Articoli

Quest'anno alcuni dei miei articoli scritti in italiano o in inglese per I-Fam News sono stati pubblicati anche in altre lingue. 

Francese:

‘Angleterre et Pays de Galles, avortements record’

https://ifamnews.com/fr/angleterre-et-pays-de-galles-avortements-record

 

L’Irlande stoppe l’euthanasie

https://ifamnews.com/fr/l-irlande-stoppe-l-euthanasie

 

Tedesco:

‘COVID-19 und Kultusverbot: Übersicht der Restriktionen in EU-Ländern’ https://www.ifamnews.com/de/covid-19-und-kultusverbot-bersicht-der-restriktionen-in-eu-l-ndern/

 

‘Rekordabtreibungszahlen in England und Wales’

https://ifamnews.com/de/rekordabtreibungszahlen-in-england-und-wales

 

Irland stoppt Euthanasie

https://ifamnews.com/de/irland-stoppt-euthanasie

Abtreibungswelle nach Liberalisierung in Nordirland

https://ifamnews.com/de/abtreibungswelle-nach-liberalisierung-in-nordirland

 

Serbo:

‘РЕКОРДНО ВИСОК БРОЈ АБОРТУСА У ЕНГЛЕСКОЈ И ВЕЛСУ’

https://ifamnews.com/sr/rekordno-visok-broj-abortusa-u-engleskoj-i-velsu

 

‘ИРСКА ЗАСАД РЕКЛА НЕ ЕУТАНАЗИЈИ’

https://ifamnews.com/sr/irska-zasad-rekla-ne-eutanaziji

Spagnolo:

Celebrando a Irlanda donde se ha detenido la eutanasia

https://ifamnews.com/es/celebrando-a-irlanda-donde-se-ha-detenido-la-eutanasia

Russo: Pozdravim zhe Irlandiiu, gde ostanovili evtanaziiu

https://ifamnews.com/ru/pozdravim-zhe-irlandiiu-gde-ostanovili-evtanaziiu

Missing marriage and the baby carriage

All around the Western world, people are marrying later or not at all. The average Irish couple is now well into their 30s by the time they tie the knot, and marriage rates in Ireland have plunged since the 1970s. A similar pattern exists in Canada, where a new study from pro-family think tank, Cardus highlights some of the reasons behind the trend, including economic ones such as the cost of housing, and cultural ones like the wish to pursue a career first.

Looking at the cultural forces a bit more closely, the paper, entitled ‘Marriage and the Baby Carriage’ quotes sociologist Brad Wilcox. He contrasts the “soulmate” model of marriage, which prioritises individual fulfilment through intense romantic connection with the “institutional” model which focuses more on parenthood and mutual support. The institutional model is more stable, he says, it leads to higher-quality relationships, and it is more beneficial for society. But the soulmate model is the one promoted by media.

For many young adults, marriage becomes obsolete when they see their relationships more as a form of self-expression than a commitment. Marriage is meant to shape people’s behaviour and character towards a clear goal, which is the good of the children and of the spouse. Young adults now like to pursue self-expression outside of marriage but the resulting delay in and the decline of marriages, and of partnership in general, has implications for the whole of society.

One of the obvious negative implications for society is the reduction in fertility. This is a common problem in the Western world, even in places with a generous welfare state, such the Scandinavian countries.

Low fertility rates have an adverse impact on labour supply, public pensions, the health care system, etc.

Some countries are replacing their ageing populations with immigrants. Others, such as Poland and Hungary, are helping families with benefits and allowances, extended parental leaves and subsidies to child-care. The efficacy of those policies has to be tested locally but there is no doubt that if the portion of partnered young adults continues to drop, as it is happening in Canada for instance, it will be impossible to increase fertility rates.

The promotion of marriage, then, as a form of stable commitment, becomes a key factor to tackle what has been called the “demographic winter”. Particularly, the institutional model marriage, focused on the good of the family, more than the soulmate model focused on adults’ needs, should be promoted.

The Cardus paper concludes: “Public policy can address economic issues that make family formation more difficult, and this deserves far more attention. There are limits to what policy can accomplish, however, and policymakers should be cautious about inadvertently intruding on important aspects of family well-being. We should begin by asking about the family life that young adults aspire to, and then seek to identify and address all of the barriers that keep them from achieving these aspirations”.

Court rules in favour of England’s pro-eugenics abortion law

The High Court of Justice in London has rejected a legal challenge against the law that allows babies with Down Syndrome or other disabilities to be aborted up to birth. The applicants will take the case onto the Court of Appeal.

Twenty-six-year-old Heidi Crowter (pictured), an advocate for people with Down Syndrome like herself, and Máire Lea-Wilson, whose son Aidan has the same condition, claim that the 1968 Abortion Act promotes inequality and perpetuates outdated negative stereotypes as it puts no gestational limits to abortion when the baby has a disability.  A legal limit of 6 months applies only to babies with no disability.

The judges dismissed the claim and found that the legislation strikes a “balance between the interests of the foetus and the rights of women”.

One of the two judges in this case has a long record of legally representing abortions providers before becoming a judge. 

“This is a very sad day but I will keep fighting”, commented campaigner Heidi Crowter after the ruling. She said she will take the case to the Court of Appeal.

 With non-invasive prenatal tests it is now increasingly easy to detect chromosomal abnormalities and the number of abortions on disability grounds is increasing. A study covering the period 2013-2017 showed that the number of babies born with Down Syndrome has fallen by 30pc in NHS hospitals that have introduced this new form of screening.

In Ireland, it is possible to discover if a fetus has a chromosomal anomaly before the legal limit of 12 weeks, using such tests. Nonetheless, the window of time to request and obtain such terminations is quite restricted and many women go to the UK once the limit has passed. We don’t know how many babies with Down Syndrome have been aborted in Ireland under the new law but the number of Irish babies with Down Syndrome aborted in England went from 17 in 2018 to 27 in 2019, reaching 35 last year.

If the Court of Appeal will find the Abortion Act discriminatory against children with disabilities (a form of eugenics), this will have a positive impact on Irish children as well.

A recent study across Europe showed that Ireland had the highest prevalence of live Down Syndrome births in Europe: 27.8 per 10,000 against the European average of 10 per 10,000.

This was one of the positive effects of the 8^th amendment but with the new legislation, abortion is becoming more socially acceptable and there are already calls to allow terminations for non-fatal anomalies after the legal limit of 12 weeks.

When the new abortion law was introduced in Ireland, an amendment put down by pro-life politicians that attempted to ban abortion on disability ground was defeated.

A review of the existing legislation is due before the end of the year. The pressure is on to make it even more permissive.

In Northern Ireland, like in the rest of the UK, there is now no time limit to abortion on the disability ground. In March this year, a bill outlawing abortions in case of non-fatal disabilities was introduced by MLA Paul Givan. The Bill passed its second stage and it is still under consideration by the Stormont Assembly. Paul Givan has become Northern Ireland First Minister in the meanwhile but his Private Member’s Bill was transferred to another member and has been allowed to proceed.

A totalitarian twist as assisted suicide law targets Catholic hospitals

 

A new law in Queensland, Australia, will force hospitals and hospices to facilitate euthanasia even when it is contrary to their ethos. This is a very dramatic development and a clear example of how the ‘culture of death’, with the backing of the State, is eroding not only the right to life, but the ability of pro-life institutions and individuals to remain true to their ethos. The law is totalitarian in its basic impulse.

Incredibly, Catholic and other pro-life institutions will have to grant access to practitioners from outside and let them administer a lethal injection when the patients wants it, and cannot be moved to another facility. An external doctor or nurse will be permitted to overrule the treating doctors and kill the patient.

In reality, this means that in the state of Queensland there will be no health institution where euthanasia can’t, at least in theory, be performed. This is against internationally recognised medical ethics that acknowledges the right not only of individuals but also of institutions, to withdraw from what they think are unethical procedures.

The law also obliges all health care providers who do not want to practise euthanasia to inform patients about other doctors who might be able to help. They are also obliged to allow external personnel to offer information about “assisted dying” in their facilities. This represents a form of forced cooperation with evil that goes against the principle of conscientious objection in medical ethics.

Catholic Health Australia ran, without success, a concerted campaign to protect Catholic hospitals and nursing homes that provide about 20 per cent of hospital and aged care beds in Queensland.

Could something similar happen in Ireland if we permit assisted suicide, which is to be examined soon by an Oireachtas special committee, like the one which paved the way for abortion?

Already, pro-life doctors here must refer patients seeking abortions to pro-choice doctors, which is a form of forced cooperation.

Queensland is the fifth state in Australia passing a law enabling assisted suicide but the new Bill is even more radical than similar laws previously approved in other Australian states. For instance, according to the ‘Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill’, euthanasia or assisted suicide can be requested by someone with a condition “expected to cause death in 12 months”. In other Australian states such as time limit is shorter: 6 months.

Doctors have pointed out that predictions about death are often incorrect. “You can have the wrong diagnosis or you could have a very wrong assessment of life expectancy”, said Dr Stephen Parnis, Vice President of the Australian Medical Association.

In addition, in Queensland doctors will be permitted to raise the option of assisted suicide with patients, something other states do not allow. This is another terrible development.

“Australian parliaments have led the world down a new path for humankind, something unprecedented in all of human prehistory and history: that suicide is now a choice of the individual sanctioned by society”, commented indigenous leader Noel Pearson.

The promoters of the new law claim that there will be safeguards in place but the experience from other countries shows that those safeguards tend to be relaxed with time.

For instance, only last week California lawmakers made it easier to access assisted suicide. They reduced from 15 to 2 days the waiting period for verbally request it and they also eliminated the requirement for a written request in the presence of two witnesses. Oregon did something similar in 2019.

We know that once euthanasia and assisted suicide are introduced, the grounds always expand.

Padre Giovanni Scalese, superiore della missione cattolica in Afghanistan. “Nessuno di noi si aspettava una fine così repentina”

Una testimonianza preziosa direttamente da Kabul. Padre Giovanni Scalese, sacerdote Barnabita, è stato fino al 25 agosto scorso superiore della missione cattolica Missio sui iuris dell’Afghanistan istituita da Giovanni Paolo II nel 2002. È stato tra gli ultimi a lasciar la sede dell’ambasciata italiana nella capitale afghana, dove era rimasto per tutelare e raccogliere la piccola comunità di 5 suore missionarie della Carità con 14 bambini disabili loro affidati. Un gesto coraggioso degno di un vero sacerdote, che è stato notato e apprezzato ovunque. 

Padre Scalese è peraltro un personaggio noto, stimato e anche rimpianto a Firenze: è stato infatti docente di storia e filosofia nel prestigiosissimo e storico “Collegio alla Querce”, di cui è stato anche rettore dal 1994 al 1999, poco prima della sua chiusura dopo circa un secolo e mezzo di gloriosa e benemerita attività. Un’istituzione che ha formato intere generazioni di fiorentini e parte della classe dirigente della città, con un bellissimo motto Ingentes tendat ramos et tempora cingat, di origine parzialmente virgiliana. Dopo la sua partenza da Firenze, è stato dal 2000 al 2006 assistente generale del suo ordine e dal 2003 al 2009 missionario nelle Filippine e in India. Negli ultimi sette anni è rimasto invece a Kabul, superiore della missione; un incarico certo non tra i più “tranquilli”. 

Qui l'intervista: https://www.leomagazineofficial.it/2021/09/11/le-interviste-del-leo-45-padre-giovanni-scalese-superiore-della-missione-cattolica-in-afghanistan-nessuno-di-noi-si-aspettava-una-fine-cosi-repentina/

  

Aggiornamento

Torno ad aggiornare questo blog dopo mesi.  Pian piano, verranno pubblicati i tanti articoli che ho scritto quest'anno. 

Religion had a positive effect on mental health during lockdown

 

The benefits of religion to mental health are well documented and its positive impact during the pandemic has been confirmed by a number of recent studies.

Covid-19 has had a profound effect on our lives. Significant moments such as baptisms, first communions, weddings, were postponed due to the restrictions imposed by the government. Many could not the attend the funerals of friends and relatives.

Even if we consider it from a merely human point of view, without looking at its supernatural dimension, religion is beneficial to individuals and society as religious practice generally takes place in a community and it creates bonds among the faithful.

Spirituality -not necessarily in an organised form – also plays a key role during important experiences such as illness and bereavement.

Academic articles are now emerging about the impact of Covid-19 on religious practice and its consequences for psychological well-being.

The positive impact of religion and spirituality, in spite of the restrictions, has been confirmed by these studies.

A survey conducted in Brazil and published in the International Journal of Social Psychiatry, found that “most participants (73.4%) reported that religiosity and spirituality was helping them to cope with the social isolation, 57.3% have experienced a spiritual growth and 33.8% believed that the social isolation has improved their religious activities.”

Those who could not attend religious ceremonies, found help in private prayer or in online worship.

A study assessing the impact of the pandemic on the America’s Orthodox Jewish population discovered that “positive religious coping, intrinsic religiosity and trust in God strongly correlated with less stress and more positive impact, while negative religious coping and mistrust in God correlated with the inverse. “

A study carried out in Italy during the first lockdown confirmed that “spirituality and religious practices are a protective factor connected not only with psychological and mental but also physical health.”

A survey conducted among the Irish prisoners abroad identified prayer and spirituality as the most helpful to manage stress and anxiety.

The Iona Institute has commissioned a number of polls during the pandemic to track what happened to religious practice during the lockdowns and then when restrictions eased.

There is a risk associated with public religious events if they are not properly managed, but this has to be balanced with the benefits that religious practice brings to those who do attend, and to society in general as a consequence. For most of the pandemic this was overlooked by the Government and NPHET and hence we had the longest overall ban on public worship in Europe.

The above-mentioned studies have confirmed the positive impact that religion and spirituality have on us, particularly in difficult times. Thus, any future decision about further limiting religious ceremonies (churches are still allowed only to fill to 50pc capacity) should also consider the negative consequences that those restrictions will have on our psychological health.

Some good news on the pro-life front in the US

 

Some good news from the US; a new law in Texas bans abortion from six weeks of pregnancy.  This is a so-called ‘heartbeat law’ because it is at six weeks or so that the foetal heart starts developing and beating.

The law, which will still allow terminations in case of medical emergencies, was signed in May and took effect this week after the Supreme Court in Washington rejected an emergency petition from abortion clinics to put the legislation on hold.

Twelve other US states have passed similar legislation protecting life from the initial heartbeat – North Dakota being the first in 2013 – but those laws were struck down by the courts and are not in effect. Texas is the first state successfully implement this measure.

This is significant not only because Texas is the second largest state in America, with a population of more than 29 million, but also because their original and successful legal approach will inspire other states to follow a similar route.

Here is what makes this legislation different from other ‘heart-beat’ laws: it will allow any private citizen, from anywhere in the US, to sue anyone who carries out or helps facilitate abortion in Texas after the six-week limit. The pregnant woman cannot be sued.

This is a novel approach as citizens, rather than state officials, will enforce the ban. In the past, pro-choice groups have stopped foetal heartbeat bills by suing the state but as there is no state official enforcing the Texas law, this time there is no one to sue.

To prevent potential court cases, state officials are barred from enforcing the law. As a consequence of this new approach, many abortion clinics are likely to close, rather than risking being inundated by lawsuits.

The pro-life movement in the US is gaining significant achievements. The pro-choice Guttmacher Institute said that 2021 is “already the worst legislative year ever for US abortion rights”.

Almost one hundred pro-life measures have been enacted since the beginning of the year, although they are often not in effect because of legal challenges. A new South Dakota law, that is in  effect, makes it illegal to terminate the lives of babies with Down Syndrome.  Arizona outlawed abortion of disabled children suffering from a foetal anomaly. This is also in effect.

Four states – Texas being one of them – have adopted bans at six weeks of pregnancy. Only the one in Texas was able to survive a blocking move in the courts. The one in Oklahoma, which is due to take effect in November, has been just challenged by pro-abortion organisations.

This autumn, the Supreme Court will consider a key case involving Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban. The Court will decide if it is constitutional to ban abortion before viability, when the child can survive outside the womb. The decision could have a profound impact on future pro-life legislation.

The decision by the Supreme Court not to block the Texas law isn’t the end of the matter. The substance of the law is being challenged by pro-choice groups and by President Biden. It will probably make its way back to the Supreme Court eventually and then we will see what happens, but for now, it’s good news, and we will take that. The Irish pro-life movement should take inspiration.