The head of Pakistan’s Catholic Bishops’ Conference has lamented that “the scourge of terrorism has spread like a cancer and it has long roots in our society” after more than 80 people were killed and 350 injured by a suicide bombing at a Sufi shrine in Sindh on 16 February. Islamist terror group Islamic State claimed responsibility. Archbishop Joseph Coutts of Karachi condemned the attack as the worst act of terrorism in months. “It is sad that a Muslim shrine has been attacked in a Muslim country, and we feel so helpless,” he said, adding that “the whole nation should stand united, without discrimination of faith and use all peaceful methods and reject these terrorists”. The bishops’ Justice and Peace Commission called for a national action plan against terrorism.
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif condemned the bombing as an assault on a “progressive, inclusive future of Pakistan”.
Norma McCorvey, the anonymous plaintiff in Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 Supreme Court ruling that legalised abortion in the United States, died on Saturday in Katy, Texas, reportedly of heart failure. She was 69. In 1998, McCorvey converted to Catholicism, after talks with Fr Frank Pavone, the director of Priests for Life. Fr Pavone, in a statement, said Ms McCorvey, a friend for more than 20 years. “was victimised and exploited by abortion ideologues when she was a young woman but she came to be genuinely sorry that a decision named for her has led to the deaths of more than 58 million children. Norma’s conversion to Christianity, then to Catholicism, was sincere and I was honoured to be part of that journey.”
More than 220 Dutch doctors have signed a protest against helping patients to die whose dementia prevents them from making an informed judgement about ending their lives.
Their protest, printed in full-page ads in three national daily newspapers, concerned patients who had made a “living will” advocating euthanasia and had reached a stage of dementia that doctors judge to be unbearable.
The Dutch Church has regularly protested against euthanasia but public support is strong and euthanising patients with dementia has been allowed since 2015. The doctors, including at least 30 who act as consultants for euthanasia applications, said dementia patients cannot confirm they want their advance directives to be carried out, and leaving the decision to doctors causes confusion and uncertainty.
Canadian crisis
The Catholic Archbishop of Vancouver, John Michael Miller, has called on Catholics to respond to a drug overdose crisis in the city, which is “devastating families and communities”. More than 900 people died of illicit drug overdoses in 2016, prompting the provincial government to declare a public health emergency. That number represented an 80-per-cent increase in overdose deaths from the previous year.
Pro-life campaigners in France now risk up to two years in prison and fines of 30,000 euros if their websites are judged to mislead users by stressing complications from and alternatives to abortion and do not openly state that they are pro-life. Left-wing and centre-left parties in the National Assembly voted it into law on 15 February despite criticism by the conservative Republicans that the new crime of “online obstruction of abortion” amounted to a violation of free speech. Cardinal André Vingt-Trois, Archbishop of Paris, called the new law “an ideological choice” and said it “goes to the limit of democratic practice, and even beyond it”. The bishops’ conference formally protested earlier in the legislative process, saying the new law was being rushed through parliament without proper consultation.
Following the murder of two radio hosts during a Facebook Live broadcast, the Archbishop of Santo Domingo, Francisco Ozoria, has deplored the wave of crime and violence that the Dominican Republic is experiencing. On 15 February, in the city of San Pedro de Macoris, a gunman entered the FM 103.5 radio station and opened fire, killing Luis Manuel Medina and Leo Martinez. They were presenters of the news programme Milenio Caliente or “Hot Millennium”. The motive of the killings is still unknown, although cameras at the station recorded the incident. The following day, a suspect shot at the police and then shot and killed himself, according to official reports. The two victims’ morning show was known for being an honest forum to discuss politics and social issues.
Michael Novak, the Catholic social philosopher who abandoned the liberal politics he espoused in the 1960s to make the theological and moral case for capitalism in a series of widely discussed books, died on Friday last week at his home in Washington DC. He was 83.
“Capitalism forms morally better people than socialism does,” Novak said in a 2007 interview with Crisis, a magazine he helped found in 1982. “Capitalism teaches people to show initiative and imagination, to work cooperatively in teams, to love and to cherish the law; it forces persons not only to rely on themselves and their own moral qualities, but to recognise those moral qualities in others and to cooperate with others freely.”
(Next week in The Tablet, an appreciation by Samuel Gregg.)
The Chicago Symphony Orchestra performed Haydn’s “Seven Last Words” at Holy Name Cathedral last week before a packed audience of 1,300 under conductor Riccardo Muti. The event served as a prelude to Lent. Cardinal Blase Cupich participated, offering a brief reflection on each of the last words before the orchestra played the relevant sonata. He also arranged for 200 complimentary tickets to be given to disadvantaged families helped by the Church.
A collapsing economy and a war that the bishops criticise as evil has led to a famine in parts of South Sudan, the Government and the UN announced on 20 February. More than 100,000 people are affected. The numbers are expected to rise to a million in the coming days if there is no urgent help for what is being seen as a man-made tragedy following three years of conflict. More than 4.9 million people, 40 per cent of the population, urgently need food, said Jeremy Hopkins, Unicef representative in South Sudan.
Francis to visit Anglican church tomorrow
POPE FRANCIS will become the first pontiff to visit an Anglican church in Rome when he pays a visit to All Saints tomorrow. He will take part in an Ecumenical Service celebrating 200 years since the first Church of England act of worship took place in the Eternal City. The liturgy consists of a short Choral Evensong service which includes the blessing of an icon and the twinning of All Saints with the Catholic parish of “Ognissanti”, a Roman church with strong ecumenical ties. The Pope is expected to deliver a homily during the event, which comes two weeks before the first ever Anglican liturgy is celebrated in St Peter’s Basilica. On 13 March the choir of Merton College, Oxford, will sing Evensong from the 1662 prayerbook.
Meanwhile more than €2 million (£1.1 million) has been seized in cases of suspected money laundering by Vatican authorities, the promoter of justice has revealed. Gian Pietro Milano, who holds the role of a chief prosecutor, revealed the seizures during his annual address to the Vatican’s criminal justice system.
Müller defends a ‘healthy’ decentralisation
In his new 600-page book entitled Der Papst – Sendung und Auftrag (“The Pope – Mission and Mandate”) published by Herder on 20 February, Cardinal Gerhard Müller supports Pope Francis’ call for a “healthy decentralisation” of the Church but underlines that it must be a “cautious decentralisation”, writes Christa Pongratz-Lippitt.
“Bishops, Synods and bishops’ conferences must assume greater responsibility, including a certain doctrinal competence,” Cardinal Müller writes, without specifying examples. “Separatist tendencies and arrogant behaviour (on the part of bishops or bishops’ conferences etc.) damage the Church,” he points out. A conference could never declare “binding dogmatic declarations – let alone define dogmas, or [change] sacramental structures”.
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