FAICL'S CHRONICLES

CNA Newsroom, Mar 20, 2023 / 16:00 pm (CNA).

The U.S. Catholic bishops released a statement Monday offering moral guidance for Catholic health care institutions, reiterating that “gender transition” interventions are not to be performed because they do not respect the fact that God has created each person as a unity of body and soul. 

“The body is not an object, a mere tool at the disposal of the soul, one that each person may dispose of according to his or her own will, but it is a constitutive part of the human subject, a gift to be received, respected, and cared for as something intrinsic to the person,” the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Doctrine wrote.

“As the range of what we can do expands, we must ask what we should or should not do. An indispensable criterion in making such determinations is the fundamental order of the created world. Our use of technology must respect that order.”

To that end, the bishops wrote, “Catholic health care services must not perform interventions, whether surgical or chemical, that aim to transform the sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex or take part in the development of such procedures.”

“They must employ all appropriate resources to mitigate the suffering of those who struggle with gender incongruence, but the means used must respect the fundamental order of the human body. Only by using morally appropriate means do health care providers show full respect for the dignity of each human person.”

The March 20 statement, titled â€œDoctrinal Note on the Moral Limits to Technological Manipulation of the Human Body,” is intended, the bishops say, to provide moral criteria for Catholic health care institutions for discerning which medical interventions promote the authentic good of the human person and which are injurious. The bishops said they developed the statement in consultation with medical ethicists, physicians, psychologists, and moral theologians. 

The bishops note that modern technology offers chemical, surgical, and genetic interventions for the functioning of the human body as well as for modifying its appearance. There are two scenarios, they said, whereby “technological interventions” can be morally justified: when they are aimed at repairing a defect in the body or sacrificing a part of the body for the sake of the whole, such as with amputation. These kinds of interventions “respect the fundamental order and finality inherent in the human person.”

However, gender transition surgeries “regards this order as unsatisfactory in some way and proposes a more desirable order, a redesigned order,” and thus are not morally permissible.

“These technological interventions are not morally justified either as attempts to repair a defect in the body or as attempts to sacrifice a part of the body for the sake of the whole,” the bishops asserted. 

The bishops said one of the reasons for this moral calculus is that the “transitioning” person’s organs, which undergo mutilation and reconstruction during the gender transition process, are not disordered but are healthy. Moreover, “when a part of the body is legitimately sacrificed for the sake of the whole body, whether by the entire removal or substantial reconfiguration of a bodily organ, the removal or reconfiguring of the bodily organ is reluctantly tolerated as the only way to address a serious threat to the body. Here, by contrast, the removal or reconfiguring is itself the desired result.”

Discussing the proliferation of “gender transition” medical interventions, the bishops noted that Catholic health care institutions are not to take part in these interventions because they do not respect the “fundamental order of the human body” as being “sexually differentiated.”

“Such interventions, thus, do not respect the fundamental order of the human person as an intrinsic unity of body and soul, with a body that is sexually differentiated,” the bishops continued. 

“The soul does not come into existence on its own and somehow happen to be in this body, as if it could just as well be in a different body. A soul can never be in another body, much less be in the wrong body,” the bishops wrote. 

“Because of this order and finality, neither patients nor physicians nor researchers nor any other persons have unlimited rights over the body; they must respect the order and finality inscribed in the embodied person.”

The bishops quoted Pope Francis, who wrote in his encyclical ​​Laudato Si’: “The acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire world as a gift from the Father and our common home, whereas thinking that we enjoy absolute power over our own bodies turns, often subtly, into thinking that we enjoy absolute power over creation.”

Relying on medical interventions that do not respect the body-soul unity is a “mistake,” they wrote. 

“An approach that does not respect the fundamental order will never truly solve the problem in view; in the end, it will only create further problems. The Hippocratic tradition in medicine calls upon all health care providers first and foremost to ‘do no harm.’ Any technological intervention that does not accord with the fundamental order of the human person as a unity of body and soul, including the sexual difference inscribed in the body, ultimately does not help but, rather, harms the human person.”

Washington D.C., Mar 20, 2023 / 15:36 pm (CNA).

This Easter season the U.S. bishops are inviting old and new Catholics to discover the truth, beauty, and goodness of the Mass through a brand-new reflection series releasing every Thursday from Divine Mercy Sunday to Pentecost, April 13 through May 25.

Titled “Beautiful Light: A Paschal Mystagogy” and part of the bishop’s National Eucharistic Revival campaign, the series will feature powerful weekly reflections from some of the nation’s leading Catholic speakers and theologians on the divine mystery of the Mass.

“At every age and stage of life, Jesus invites us to discover the joy of friendship with him,” said National Eucharistic Revival spokesperson Sister Alicia Torres, FE, in a Monday press release. “For Catholics, this happens in a most special way during Mass — the source and summit of the Christian life.’”

“Many of us haven’t had the chance to really explore the beauty and mystery God invites us into at Mass. That is the goal of [this series], to give every Catholic a chance to go deeper this Easter season,” Torres said.

Over the seven weeks of the series, seven different Catholic thinkers will write reflections on different rites of the Mass: 

1. Archbishop Charles Thompson of Indianapolis will kick off the series by writing on sacrifice. 

2. Sister Maria Miguel Wright of the Dominican Sisters of Mary, Mother of the Eucharist, will follow by reflecting on praise and thanksgiving. 

3. Next, renowned biblical scholar Jeff Cavins will write on the universal call to holiness.

4. Archbishop James Peter Sartain of Seattle will reflect on Jesus as Lord and lover of souls. 

5. United States Conference of Catholic Bishops President Archbishop Timothy Broglio will write about the paschal mystery. 

6. Theologian and podcaster Father Harrison Ayre will write on the communal character of the Church as the body of Christ. 

7. Archdiocese of Washington adult formation and Hispanic catechesis coordinator Kately Javier will finish off the series by reflecting on the joy of trinitarian adoration. 

“Whether you are just joining the Church at Easter Vigil this year or have been Catholic your entire life, this series is for you,” Torres said.

Torres told CNA that her “primary hope is that this series will help us open our hearts to a new and deeper encounter with Jesus in the Mass that impels us to go on mission with Jesus — especially in the ordinary, everyday moments of our lives.” 

“What does it look like to go on mission with Jesus? Jesus told us to love one another as he has loved us (Jn 13:34). Loving this way — the way Jesus loves — this is what it means to go on mission with him. When we are on mission with Jesus, we are living eucharistic lives,” Torres said.

The paschal mystagogy theme calls for an Easter rediscovery of the Mass. The word “paschal” refers to the Easter season while mystagogy refers to “liturgical catechesis to initiate people in the mysteries of Christ” (Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 1075).

In a 2019 address, Pope Francis said “mystagogy means discovering the new life we have received in the people of God through the sacraments, and continually rediscovering the beauty of renewing it.”

To access the Easter reflections, subscribe here. 

For more information on the National Eucharistic Revival, click here. 

Washington D.C., Mar 20, 2023 / 13:42 pm (CNA).

Canon law enthusiasts can breathe a sigh of relief. A popular canon law website will continue to offer its content to the public despite fears that it would have to shut down because of a copyright dispute over its English translation of the Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law. 

The website, CanonLaw.Ninja, owned by Father Paul Hedman, will be able to continue its operations with a different translation owned by the Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland (CLSGBI).

As CNA reported last Thursday, Hedman shared the Canon Law Society of America’s Code of Canon Law on his website for years before receiving a cease-and-desist letter from the organization telling him to take that translation of the Code of Canon Law down by March 17. He was also instructed to destroy all copies on the website and all personal copies unless purchased from the CLSA.

Hedman told CNA that the British and Irish CLSGBI offered its translation free of charge, as long as their organization receives proper attribution.

As of this past weekend, the website continues to operate with the CLSGBI translation now in use. 

“The Canon Law Society of Great Britain and Ireland has graciously allowed me to use their translation of the Code of Canon Law,” Hedman said in a Tweet Saturday. 

CanonLaw.Ninja, which describes itself as “a resource for both professional and armchair canonists,” includes up-to-date translations of the Code of Canon Law as well as other documents, such as the Code of Canons of the Eastern Churches. It also offers an easy format and a tool that allows users to search for relevant canons. Hedman created the website as a seminarian because the only other online copy of the code, which was on the Vatican’s website, was not up to date and was not searchable.

Although Hedman initially took to Twitter to express his shock and disappointment over the copyright enforcement, he has since had an amicable discussion with CLSA. He issued a statement saying CLSA has clarified some of the reasons why it sent him the cease-and-desist letter and added that CLSA intends to work with CanonLaw.Ninja in the coming months. 

“As it turns out, CLSA itself did not possess the right to publish digital copies online until recently (beginning with the upcoming fourth printing), which led to the desire to address potentially conflicting online versions as the society itself tries to make the code more accessible in digital form,” Hedman said in the statement. 

“CLSA is trying to find a new way to work together with me to use and improve CanonLaw.Ninja, hopefully integrating the site with CLSA’s contributions,” the statement continued. “Based on the conversation, I am very hopeful that we will find a solution beneficial to everyone involved.”

Neither CLSA nor Hedman would comment further on the future collaboration when reached by CNA. Rather, they both referred CNA to Hedman’s statement and suggested that further announcements about the collaboration could come in the next few months.