Pittsburgh, Pa., Aug 13, 2016 / 03:18 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Despite a Supreme Court order seeming to protect its religious freedom, the Catholic Diocese of Pittsburgh says the federal government continues to exert strong pressure to force contraceptives into its health care plans.   The federal government has made “an extremely aggressive interpretation” of a recent Supreme Court’s order, the diocese said Aug. 11. The government is “apparently trying to take over” its health plans. The government aims to force the diocese’s third party administrators to include objectionable coverage in self-insured plans. “We think that is an erroneous reading of what the Supreme Court said,” the diocese stated. Under the 2010 Affordable Care Act, the federal government mandated that many health care plans cover sterilization procedures and contraceptive drugs, including some drugs that can cause early abortions. The mandates would require Catholic-run organizations to help aid access to procedures and drugs that violate Catholic morals. Bishop David Zubik of Pittsburgh was the lead plaintiff in one of the lawsuits challenging the mandate. Catholic Charities of Pittsburgh and the Little Sisters of the Poor were also parties to the case. Over 300 plaintiffs have filed legal challenges to the mandate or joined others’ challenges. They argued that the government mandate violated their religious freedom. They also objected that the government granted selective exemptions for the mandate to other organizations and its proposed revisions were gravely insufficient. In May 2016, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ordered the case to be returned to a lower court due to new developments in the case. The order was considered a win for the plaintiffs. The decision also authorized the federal government to begin the process of providing contraceptive services to employees of Catholic Charities of Pittsburgh and other objecting agencies, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports. In a court filing, the government said it will start notifying insurers to start providing contraceptives. The Diocese of Pittsburgh, however, is self-insured. The diocese said this self-insured status means there is no obligation or authority for the third party administrator to provide the objectionable coverage. “The Supreme Court also made clear that we cannot be fined or penalized for refusing to comply with the government's current regulations,” the Diocese of Pittsburgh said. “Therefore, we believe the government’s position is wrong.” It repeated its willingness to negotiate “a mutually agreeable solution to our impasse over religious freedom.” The Diocese of Pittsburgh said its counsel and counsels for other Supreme Court litigants met with representatives of the U.S. Department of Justice to engage in the resolution talks the diocese believed the Supreme Court had contemplated. “The government has been slow to offer anything of substance to pursue a negotiated solution, except to mention its openness to future meetings,” the diocese said. The diocese said it will work with its insurers, third-party administrators and the government to avoid future litigation. “We remain in prayer for a mutually agreeable resolution.”   Read more

Baltimore, Md., Aug 12, 2016 / 03:07 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- After the Justice Department issued a scathing rebuke of Baltimore’s policing abuses, local Catholic leaders maintained it must be a “starting point” for racial reconciliation. “We all need to stay involved. We need to make sure that this isn’t the end, [that] we don’t see this as 'as far as we go'. This is just a new starting point with another tool,” Ray Kelly, president of the Central West Baltimore community advocacy group No Boundaries Coalition, told CNA. On Wednesday, the Justice Department released the findings of its investigation into the Baltimore Police Department, which the agency said was ordered in May 2015 after repeated allegations of possible police misconduct from Baltimore’s citizens and civic leaders. What the agency found was a “pattern of civil rights violations” by the department. “BPD makes stops, searches and arrests without the required justification; uses enforcement strategies that unlawfully subject African Americans to disproportionate rates of stops, searches and arrests; uses excessive force; and retaliates against individuals for their constitutionally-protected expression,” the report stated. It also told of “an inadequate response to reports of sexual assault” by the department. The information was compiled from discussions with civic leaders, community leaders, citizens, and police officers, as well as ride-alongs with officers, police documents, and internal police data. “Community members living in the City’s wealthier and largely white neighborhoods told us that officers tend to be respectful and responsive to their needs, while many individuals living in the City’s largely African-American communities informed us that officers tend to be disrespectful and do not respond promptly to their calls for service,” the report stated. “Members of these largely African-American communities often felt they were subjected to unjustified stops, searches, and arrests, as well as excessive force.” Catholic Charities of Baltimore condemned the abuses detailed in the report. Executive director William J. McCarthy called the report “sobering and distressing” and added that it “should be a cause of great concern for all of us.” “It is clear from the report that nothing short of a wholesale change in the culture within the BCPD will result in the kind of reform that is necessary to ensure the fair and equitable treatment of every citizen,” he added, noting that the police commissioner has started to implement some “long overdue reforms” which “is an encouraging start.” Kelly explained to CNA that abuses by the police are nothing new, despite a continued push for reform by community leaders. The “police tactics are crafted to control our communities, and we’ve been saying that for years,” he reflected, pointing to a double standard in how low-income and minority communities are policed versus more affluent communities. For instance, in the West Baltimore neighborhood of Sandtown-Winchester there were once four homicides in the span of a few days, he said, but when community leaders had a “meeting with Baltimore’s chief of patrols, and we brought that to light, and we kind of got brushed to the side.” However, after three robberies at a subway station in a more affluent neighborhood, the police made it their “first priority” to respond with an extra presence there, he said. “This was the same district commander. The only difference was the first meeting was in Sandtown-Winchester and the second meeting was in Bolton Hill.” “Those robberies carried more weight with our police department than the lives of four black men,” Kelly said. “The property of three white people took priority, and that’s the way the police department is structured.” Policies are “geared to target minorities and these minority neighborhoods, and because you’re a minority, you’re black, you’re brown, you’re a suspect. There’s suspicion about what you’re doing there and what you’re up to.” This leads to distrust of the police in which citizens “assume the worst,” he added. “They question why a young black man runs when the police car pulls up; but you get slapped around enough times or you spend a couple of nights in Central Booking with no charge, and you know why people run,” he said. Community leaders have been speaking up “that there are racist practices,” he said, “and we’ve gotten pushback for years saying that that’s not the case, and one bad apple doesn’t spoil the whole bunch.” “And the DOJ report kind of validates what we’ve been saying for years and kind of brings in the concept that the whole barrel is rotten. So if you’ve got a rotten barrel, you could have 100 good apples. They’ll be rotten soon enough.” Yet the Church has been doing more to further race relations in Baltimore, especially in the last year, he explained. “I’m happy to see that the Church is getting more involved in this actual racial part of the conversation, and not just doing what we can for the community but now stepping up and actually doing things with the community.” Instead of just sending materials to needy neighborhoods, the Church is now “part of the planning and the structuring” of events there. The No Boundaries Coalition partnered with Pax Christi USA for an “annual public witness,” for instance. The start of racial justice circles has led to “conversations about privilege and race relations outside the police department,” Kelly said, and even talks of “how can people in the Church use their white privilege to assist lower-income communities in their fight for equality and racial justice.” “We want to put that message out there that the Catholic Church is still the refuge for those in need,” he said. The DOJ report is no “silver bullet,” he insisted, but rather “another tool for another opportunity to actually change the policies and address these systemic issues.” “So it’s more from a Church and a Catholic perspective,” he said, “this is our voices actually being heard, and its validation. And that could be the first step towards change.” Read more

Hollywood, Calif., Aug 12, 2016 / 11:39 am (CNA).- For the first time in nearly 55 years, one of the greatest stories ever told will be retold on the big screen starting Aug. 19, as Paramount and MGM’s “Ben-Hur” — a remake of th... Read more

Orange County, Calif., Aug 12, 2016 / 09:24 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Major celebrations are set to mark the 40th anniversary of California’s Diocese of Orange, one of the largest dioceses in the U.S. “We have been incredibly blessed by God as ... Read more

San Jose, Calif., Aug 12, 2016 / 03:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Ryan Scheel was shopping for a rosary on eBay when one listing caught him off guard. A first class relic of the bone of a saint, still in its wax-sealed reliquary, was listed for sale – to the tune of $3,600. “The listing was crass enough to even describe the relic as 'ex ossibus,' a Latin term meaning 'from the bones,'” Scheel told CNA e-mail comments. He decided to further search the online auction site, and found “pages and pages” of other first class relics for sale, violating eBay’s own policy that prohibits the sale of human body parts, other than human scalp hair. Scheel, who is also the founder and editor of the Catholic resource site uCatholic, said he tried to use eBay’s “Report Item” feature in order to alert the site of the first class relics, but he said the closest option given from the available drop-down list states: “The item in this listing is an artifact, fossil, or relic taken from federal or state public land or Native American land or battlefield.” Catholic News Agency reached out to eBay for comment on this issue, but did not receive a response by press time. The listing of first class relics “is incredibly insensitive to the Catholic faith in way I doubt would be tolerated for other religions,” Scheel said. “But also...common decency should tell eBay that profiting off of the sale of body parts is ghastly and unethical, no matter who the remains belonged to in life.” That's why Scheel decided to launch a petition calling for eBay to remove the listings of the first class relics. He hopes to obtain signatures from at least 25,000 Catholics in order to alert the site of the illicit sales. “The sale of Catholic Relics is not only a great and terrible offense against the Catholic faith, it is also explicitly against your very own corporate policy concerning the sale of human body parts and remains,” the petition reads.   “As a Catholic, we ask that you remove all current listings of Catholic relics containing the mortal remains of the Saints and actively monitor and prohibit any future listings,” it continues. Scheel told CNA that it appears that the people listing the relics seem to somehow be bypassing the ban on the sale of human body parts, but on eBay’s part, “the issue here seems like one of enforcement, and hopefully not ill-will or religious insensitivity.” The policies of eBay technically allow for the sale of second and third class relics, or first class relics of objects such as the cross or the shroud of Turin. However, Schell said “eBay should also forbid this out of common respect for the Catholic Faith.” Code of Canon Law 1190 states that it is “absolutely forbidden to sell sacred relics,” whether or not they are human remains.    Some have argued that what is for sale is the reliquary itself, and not the relic. However, in the case of many of the first class relics for sale on eBay – some of which are going for thousands of dollars - that seems to not be the case, said JD Flynn, a canon lawyer and director of communications for the Diocese of Lincoln, Neb. “Here’s what needs to be considered: is the reliquary being sold for a price comparable to that of similar objects which do not contain relics?  If a silver box containing Mother Teresa's eyelashes costs $1,000, and a silver box with no eyelashes costs $100, it’s very difficult to argue that the person is not engaging in the sacrilege of simony,” Flynn told CNA. Simony is a sacrilegious practice that consists in buying and selling what is spiritual (relics) in return for what is temporal (money).   In the case of the eBay relics, Flynn said, it may be permissible for Catholics to buy the listed relics in order to protect them from further harm or desecration. “For example, it would be hard to justify getting into a bidding war with other devout Catholics for a relic, but it would be easy to understand getting into a bidding war for a relic with the owners of some hipster bar that wants relics for decorations,” Flynn said. “But in such a situation, the merchant is obviously engaged in simony.” The full petition can be found at: http://http://ucatholic.com/ebay Read more