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Post by Del »

Hugo Drax wrote: 27 Mar 2023, 17:32
Del wrote: 25 Mar 2023, 09:59
Hugo Drax wrote: 23 Mar 2023, 10:05 Correction: this here is Wosbald's and Del's shitting hole.
What else is this Jesuit's hole to be used for?
Resisting Father Martin joke....
Thumb's up that!
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The Right to Migrate

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Catholic leaders blast new US–Canada immigration deal

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Asylum seekers cross the border at Roxham Road from New York into Canada on Friday, March 24, 2023, in Champlain, N.Y. The irregular border crossing will be closed permanently tonight at midnight. (Credit: Ryan Remiorz/The Canadian Press, via AP)

NEW YORK — A Catholic refugee organization has come out against the expansion of an immigration agreement between the United States and Canada, arguing it allows both countries to turn away more asylum seekers and therefore limits their legal right to seek protection.

President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced the expansion of the Canada-US Safe Third Country Agreement on March 24. At the same time, it was announced that Canada had agreed to welcome an additional 15,000 migrants this year on a humanitarian basis from top sending Western Hemisphere countries, like Haiti, Colombia, and Ecuador.

Leaders of the Jesuit Refugee Service — an immigration advocacy organization — in both countries came out against the move. Norbert Piché, Country Director of JRS Canada, said rather than punish those seeking asylum, the countries need to address the reasons migrants are arriving at the Canada–U.S. border.

“While we welcome the Canadian Government’s reported plan to create a new refugee program for 15,000 migrants from the Western Hemisphere fleeing persecution and violence, it must not be made at the expense of all those who are seeking Canada’s protection by entering the country irregularly,” Piché said in a statement.

“Canada must be consistent in its efforts to welcome all who seek safety,” he said.

[…]

Joan Rosenhauer, the executive director of JRS/USA, criticized the expansion of the agreement as the latest example of the Biden administration implementing “new restrictions to asylum that will harm those already in danger.”

Faith and immigration advocacy groups have criticized the Biden administration for like-minded policies at the U.S.–Mexico border, including a swath of new policies that expand expulsions.

“We urge the U.S. to withdraw, and dismiss consideration of, any policy that creates new barriers for vulnerable asylum seekers and to implement a fair and humane asylum system, in accordance with the long-established values of our country,” Rosenhauer said.


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Church defends Indigenous peoples: ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ was never Catholic

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Pope Francis meets with indigenous people and communities during his penitential piligrimage to Canada in July 2022 (2022 Getty Images)

A “Joint Statement” from the Dicastery for Culture and the Dicastery for Integral Human Development formally repudiates "those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery’."

Thanks to dialogue with indigenous peoples, “the Church has acquired a greater awareness of their sufferings, past and present, due to the expropriation of their lands … as well as the policies of forced assimilation, promoted by the governmental authorities of the time, intended to eliminate their indigenous cultures,” according to a “Joint Statement” issued by the Dicastery for Culture and Education and the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development, and published on Thursday.

The document states that the “Doctrine of Discovery” — a theory that served to justify the expropriation by sovereign colonizers of indigenous lands from their rightful owners — “is not a part of the teaching of the Catholic Church.” It further affirms that the papal bulls that granted such “rights” to colonizing sovereigns have never been a part of the Church’s Magisterium.

This important text, coming eight months after Pope Francis' penitential journey to Canada, clearly reaffirms the Catholic Church's rejection of the colonizing mentality. “In the course of history,” the document recalls, “the Popes have condemned acts of violence, oppression, social injustice, and slavery, including those committed against indigenous peoples.” It also notes the numerous examples of bishops, priests, women and men religious and lay faithful who gave their lives in defense of the dignity of those peoples.” At the same time, it acknowledges that “many Christians have committed evil acts against indigenous peoples for which recent Popes have asked forgiveness on numerous occasions.”

Regarding the so-called “Doctrine of Discovery", the Statement explains: “The legal concept of ‘discovery’ was debated by colonial powers from the sixteenth century onward and found particular expression in the nineteenth-century jurisprudence of courts in several countries, according to which the discovery of lands by settlers granted an exclusive right to extinguish, either by purchase or conquest, the title to or possession of those lands by indigenous peoples.” According to some scholars, this “doctrine” found its basis in several papal documents, specifically two bulls of Nicholas V, Dum Diversas (1452) and Romanus Pontifex (1455); and Alexander VI’s bull Inter Caetera (1493). These are legal acts by which these two Pontiffs authorized the Portuguese and Spanish sovereigns to seize property in colonized lands by subjugating the original populations.

“Historical research clearly demonstrates that the papal documents in question, written in a specific historical period and linked to political questions, have never been considered expressions of the Catholic faith,” the Statement declares. Nonetheless, “the Church acknowledges that these papal bulls did not adequately reflect the equal dignity and rights of indigenous peoples.” The Statement goes on to say that “ It adds that “the contents of these documents were manipulated for political purposes by competing colonial powers in order to justify immoral acts against indigenous peoples that were carried out, at times, without opposition from ecclesiastical authorities.” The two Dicasteries, therefore, affirm, “It is only just to recognize these errors, acknowledge the terrible effects of the assimilation policies and the pain experienced by indigenous peoples, and ask for pardon.”

The Statement then quotes the words of Pope Francis: “Never again can the Christian community allow itself to be infected by the idea that one culture is superior to others, or that it is legitimate to employ ways of coercing others.” The Statement goes on to say that, “in no uncertain terms, the Church’s Magisterium upholds the respect due to every human being,” and concludes, “The Catholic Church therefore repudiates those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery’.”
The Catholic Church therefore repudiates those concepts that fail to recognize the inherent human rights of indigenous peoples, including what has become known as the legal and political ‘doctrine of discovery’.
The Statement recalls the “numerous and repeated” declarations of the Church and the Popes in favour of the rights of indigenous peoples, beginning with the 1537 bull Sublimis Deus of Paul III, which solemnly declared that indigenous peoples “are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the Christian faith; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.”

Concluding, the Statement notes that, more recently, “the Church’s solidarity with indigenous peoples has given rise to the Holy See’s strong support for the principles contained in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.” It adds, “the implementation of those principles would improve the living conditions and help protect the rights of indigenous peoples as well as facilitate their development in a way that respects their identity, language, and culture.”


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At least 38 dead in a fire at a migrant center in Mexico near the U.S. border

A detention facility on the Mexican side of the border (due to Biden's "Stay in Mexico" policy).

If it weren't for Biden's "open border invitation" policies, combined with his failure to make any of this migration legal, and his letting the cartels regulate who and what gets to our borders..... these people would still be alive. And a whole lot of fentanyl victims, too.
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Catholic leaders express sorrow, outrage over dozens of migrants killed in fire

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A Venezuelan migrant mourns outside an ambulance for her injured husband while Mexican authorities and firefighters remove injured migrants, mostly Venezuelans, from inside the National Migration Institute building during a fire, in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, March 27, 2023. At least 39 people at the immigration detention center on the U.S. border died in the fire that broke out at the facility overnight, according to a statement issued by the center. (OSV News photo/Jose Luis Gonzalez, Reuters)

Mexico City — A fire in a Mexican immigration detention center has claimed the lives of at least 38 migrants, who appeared to be abandoned by guards as flames engulfed their locked cells, according to a leaked video from the facility near the U.S. border in Ciudad Juárez.

The tragedy provoked sorrow and outrage from Catholic leaders and laity working on migration matters in the United States, Mexico and across Central America, along with calls for a rethinking of immigration policy that criminalizes migrants streaming through Mexico toward the U.S..

"The pain and suffering from abandoning their homes is already too much, and we cannot allow their transit through Mexico to become an ordeal for those who leave their family and country in search of a better life," said a March 28 statement from the Mexican bishops' conference.

"As the church, we will always remain at the side of those who suffer most, of the excluded, of the poor and the neediest persons."

The blaze broke out shortly before 10 p.m. on March 27 in a section of the center holding 68 male migrants, according to Mexico's National Immigration Institute. The victims hailed from across Latin America, including 28 Guatemalans, 12 Venezuelans, 12 Salvadorans and one each from Colombia and Ecuador.

President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said March 28 that the migrants had ignited a mattress to protest their pending deportations.

"They put mattresses in the shelter doorway and ignited them," the president said. "They didn't imagine it would provoke this terrible accident."

The president's comments drew rebuke from Catholics, who pointed out the migrants had been detained and were being blamed for their own deaths.

"We do not share the idea that the president calls migrant detention centers, 'shelters'. We ask that he refrain from using language that distorts reality," the Mexican bishops' migrant ministry said in a March 28 statement.

"Enough with the euphemisms. We must not accept nor tolerate soft expressions or decorous words that are given to what truly constitutes a detention center, which does not offer dignified or safe conditions," the Guatemalan bishops' migrant ministry said in a March 27 statement.

"Immigration stations are not shelters but detention centers where the human rights of people in forced mobility are violated."

Catholic migrant aid group the Hope Border Institute in El Paso, Texas, which borders Ciudad Juárez, said in a March 27 statement, "Those who blame the victims of the fire obscure the fact these deaths are an indictment of the policies and structures implemented at large by both governments."

[…]

While the fire was the deadliest migrant tragedy in years, it follows other migrant deaths. Earlier this month, two migrants suffocated to death aboard a freight train in Texas while 15 suffered injuries. In February 2023, 17 migrants from Venezuela, Colombia and Central America died in a bus crush in Mexico's Puebla state.


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Will disowning ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ reopen a theological can of worms? [News Analysis]

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Pope Francis at Nakasuk Elementary School Square in Iqaluit, Canada, on July 29, 2022. (Credit: Gregorio Borgia/AP)

ROME — Though it was, in a sense, 530 years in the making, required two separate departments of the Roman Curia to address, and came a full eight months after demands burst into full public view during a high-profile papal trip to the New World, Thursday’s repudiation of the “Doctrine of Discovery” by the Vatican may turn out to have been the easy part.

To be clear, what the Vatican formally disowned yesterday [Thur, Mar 30] is a legal and political concept, not a theological tenet.

[…]

Part of the design for the joint statement was to craft it as an historical and politico-social declaration, without any theological import — it’s telling, in that regard, that the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith was not among its signatories.

Yet no matter how hard the Vatican may try, it seems unlikely that the theological underpinnings of what came to be known as the “Doctrine of Discovery” can be avoided indefinitely. Indeed, the issuance of Thursday’s statement seems likely to embolden forces seeking a theological reevaluation too.

Philip P. Arnold, a professor of religious studies at Syracuse University and the director of an Iroquois cultural center, told the New York Times that yesterday’s repudiation was only a “first step.”

The Vatican needs to address the “worldview” underlying the Doctrine of Discovery, Arnold said, including the idea that Christianity is superior to other religions.

And therein lies the rub.

When Pope Alexander VI granted King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I sovereignty over a broad swath of the “New World” in Inter Caetera, he may well have been issuing a political decree that was not, in itself, de fide. Yet there’s no denying that the underlying justification was theological, rooted in the inherently missionary nature of Christianity.

“Among other works well pleasing to the Divine Majesty and cherished of our heart, this assuredly ranks highest, that in our times especially the Catholic faith and the Christian religion be exalted and be everywhere increased and spread,” Alexander VI told the Spanish monarchs.

One of thorniest doctrinal dilemmas unleashed by the Second Vatican Council, though never resolved by it, was how to reconcile two core teachings: First, the missionary nature of the church, expressed in the final command of Christ on earth to “make disciples of all nations”; and second, the idea that non-Christian religions nevertheless contain “seeds of the word” and “often reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men.”

The practical question which presents itself, in light of that tension, is whether the Catholic Church should still be trying to convert followers of other religions or not.

In the 1990s and 2000s, it seemed that issue was destined to become the titanic theological contest of the era. A spate of Catholic theologians working on what became known as the “theology of religious pluralism,” including the late Belgian Jesuit Father Jacques Dupuis, Indian Jesuit Father Michael Amaladoss, the late Spanish and Indian Father Raimundo Panikkar, Sri Lankan Jesuit Aloysius Pieris and the American Jesuit Roger Haight, were all investigated and/or sanctioned at one point or another.

In general terms, the “theology of religious pluralism” holds that the diversity of the world’s religions is not simply a byproduct of original sin, but rather a positive good willed by God, and non-Christian religions can be vehicles of salvation in their own right. Christianity’s missionary instinct, therefore, has to be reimagined in terms of dialogue, outreach and mutual respect, rather than bringing souls to the faith so they don’t burn in hell.

Critics of the theology of religious pluralism argue that while respect and dialogue with other faiths are good things, it would be a betrayal of the core of Christianity to suggest that Christ is somehow inessential to salvation, or that anyone’s life would not be enriched by explicitly embracing Christian faith and practice.

Tensions reached a high-water mark in 2000, when the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith under then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the future Pope Benedict XVI, issued a document titled Dominus Iesus. It declared that whatever the Holy Spirit brings about in other religions “serves as a preparation for the gospel, and can only be understood in reference to Christ,” and insisted that Catholics must be committed to “announcing the necessity of conversion to Jesus Christ.”

Yet as suddenly as the storm had broken, it seemed to dissipate.

As pope, Benedict XVI had other fish to fry, and without his leadership the Vatican’s doctrinal office didn’t seem inclined to press the issue. At the beginning of the Francis papacy, German Cardinal Gerhard Müller, a Ratzinger protégé, tried to launch another investigation of Amaladoss, but the pope welcomed his fellow Jesuit to his morning Mass and declared him a “good theologian,” effectively ending any threat of censure.

It’s possible — indeed, it seems, likely — that as reaction to Thursday’s joint statement continues to unfold, activists and thinkers inside and outside the church may press to reopen the theological issues they see as underlying the “Doctrine of Discovery.”

If so, Vatican officials may end up feeling as if, in the effort to cure one headache, they’ve inadvertently created many more.


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Christianity remains a missionary religion that spreads truth and makes disciples of all nations.... no matter what the Jesuits are saying these days.
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"Benedict XVI had other fish to fry, and without his leadership the Vatican’s doctrinal office didn’t seem inclined to press the issue. "

This pretty much says it all, right there. And the KCs are right there with the VDO, and have one more fish fry for Lent to do, this coming Good Friday. Probably the biggest missionary event in the community each year.
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The Right to Migrate

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Deadly fire at Juárez detention center shows ‘urgency’ of addressing migrant crisis, El Paso bishop says

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Paramedics and security forces work amid the covered bodies of migrants who died in a fire at an immigration detention center in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, Tuesday, March 28, 2023. (Credit: Christian Chavez/AP)

NEW YORK — After learning that a fire at an immigration detention center in northern Mexico killed more than three dozen migrants, Bishop Mark Seitz of El Paso said the tragedy “underscores the urgency of addressing the complex humanitarian crisis” at the southern border.

“Our brother and sister migrants, who are in many cases fleeing extreme violence, persecution, and extreme poverty, deserve dignity, compassion, and the protection of their human rights as children of God,” Seitz, who is the U.S. Bishops’ Conference Migration Committee chair, said in a statement. “As a faith community we are called to respond to their suffering with love, empathy, and support.”

[…]

Seitz offered his “deepest and most heartfelt condolences” to the families of the migrants who died and extended “prayers for the swift recovery of the individuals who were injured. He also pledged to continue his advocacy for more humane immigration policies.

“As we mourn this devastating loss, I call upon people of all faiths and goodwill to join in prayer for the victims and their families,” Seitz said. “May our collective efforts lead to meaningful change and help prevent such tragedies from occurring.”

Directly across from El Paso, Ciudad Juárez has long been a hot spot for migrants to gather before they attempt to enter the United States. U.S. Customs and Border Protection have encountered almost 225,000 migrants trying to illegally cross into El Paso between Oct. 1, 2022, and February 2023, according to agency data. Overall, there have been almost 900,000 total encounters over that time, the data shows. Dylan Corbett, executive director of the El Paso-based Hope Border Institute — a faith-based immigration advocacy organization that does humanitarian work in both El Paso and Ciudad Juárez — told Crux that the fire is a direct result of U.S. pressure on Mexico to up its immigration enforcement, especially at the northern part of the border. Corbett said Hope has done humanitarian work at the National Migration Institute in Ciudad Juárez in the past, but has not had access in recent months amid the crackdown prompted by the U.S. government.

“We know there’s a direct line that you can draw from the Biden administration pressuring the government of Ciudad Juárez to increase enforcement to the death that we’ve seen,” Corbett said.

“The strategy that we’ve implemented includes as part of its overhead death, so it’s an indictment of our approach,” Corbett continued. “Death can’t be the price of immigration enforcement and there’s nothing stopping us from putting in place a humane and effective and safe process at the border.” Corbett and other immigration advocates have long been critical of the Biden administration’s border entry deterrent policies that limit migrants’ ability to seek asylum, arguing that they are not just illegal but ineffective given the desperation of many migrants. They have argued — at a time of record number of migrant crossings at the border — that the administration and Congress need to work on comprehensive reform to the nation’s immigration system and work to address the root causes that force people to migrate in the first place. In the short term, advocates say more effective legal pathways are needed.

“The system we allowed to be created in our name is predicated on pain and death and that is what killed them,” Corbett said. “We have to work to put in place a more just system.”

Seitz also works with migrants on both sides of the border, calling Ciudad Juárez El Paso’s “sister city.” He said in the aftermath of the fire, he has been in communication with the bishop of Ciudad Juárez. “I have been in contact with Bishop José Guadalupe Torres Campos, expressed my prayer solidarity with him and the faithful of his diocese, and offered support to him and the people in his pastoral care in the Diocese of Ciudad Juárez,” Seitz said.


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Abortion

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Michigan Catholic Conference laments new abortion legislation

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Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer holds up signed legislation that repeals the 1931 abortion ban statute, which criminalized abortion in nearly all cases during a bill signing ceremony, Wednesday, April 5, 2023, in Birmingham, Mich. The abortion ban, which fueled one of the largest ballot drives in state history, had been unenforceable after voters enshrined abortion rights in the state constitution last November. (Credit: Carlos Osorio/AP)

NEW YORK — After Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed legislation to repeal Michigan’s century old abortion ban on April 5, the state’s Catholic conference warned that the legislation does more than people realize.

Whitmer’s signature to House Bill 4006 repealed a 1931 law that made abortion a felony in all cases, except when “necessary to preserve the life of such woman.” The move answers a call of Michigan voters, who came out in record numbers last year to advocate for abortion liberalization.

What the Michigan Catholic Conference claims voters may not realize, however, is that Whitmer’s signature to House Bill 4006 paved the way for her to sign House Bill 4032 and Senate Bill 2, which removes the maximum 15-year felony for an abortion resulting in the death of a woman, and repeals the law that made distributing information on how to perform abortions a misdemeanor, respectively.

“The current legislative majority and Gov. Whitmer’s new abortion policy presents risk and harm for vulnerable women and does not reflect what voters were sold regarding Proposal 3 — that it would just ‘restore Roe v. Wade’ — because under Roe, each of these laws now being repealed served a valid purpose,” said Rebecca Mastee, a Michigan Catholic Conference Policy Advocate.

[…]

Signing House Bill 4006, Whitmer said the state was taking “action to make sure that our statutes and our laws reflect our values and our constitution.” About half of U.S. states have measures in place to protect abortion access, and a number have even expanded abortion since Roe was overturned.

Conversely, a number of states have restricted abortion since Roe was overturned.

The Michigan Catholic Conference maintains that their state should focus on making sure there are support systems in place to help women realize that abortion isn’t their only option.

“We urge public officials to work toward a society where women do not feel that abortion is their only choice when facing a difficult, unplanned, or unwanted pregnancy,” Mastee said. “Lawmakers should focus their efforts on helping women access the resources needed to support themselves and their families before, during and after birth.”


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