Conscience articles from December 2008

Conscience archives from December 2008

Editor's note.
December 22, 2008... THIS ISSUE OF CONSCIENCE FOCUSES ON THE ETHICS of development aid, specifically as it relates to sexual and reproductive health and rights. For the past eight years, development aid funded by the United States government has had a distinctively...

The Catholic league.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 22, 2008... I WAS DELIGHTED TO READ "Neither Religious nor Civil" (Conscience, Summer/Autumn 2008) since it noted that the Catholic League has practiced the "art of media manipulation" to put forth its agenda. Recently, Bill Donohue manipulated Clark Hoyt,...

Abortion and the State.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 22, 2008... THE DECISION BY AN American Catholic, candidate or voter, to support or oppose the criminalization of abortion is a political choice. When voting, the issue is not whether abortion is right or wrong; the question is whether the State should...

Representative Flockhart.(LETTERS)(Letter to the editor)
December 22, 2008... IT WAS SO REFRESHING TO hear from Representative Eileen Flockhart about her experiences with her bishop. ("A Voice from the Front Line," Summer-Autumn 2008) It is disgraceful, though perhaps unsurprising, that a few bishops feel that they...

Bishop would die for an end to abortion.(The Church and Abortion)(Robert Hermann)(Brief article)
December 22, 2008... AT THE FALL ASSEMBLY of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), Bishop Robert Hermann, current administrator of the St. Louis Diocese, stated, "I think any bishop here would consider it a privilege to die tomorrow to bring...

Uruguayan Congress supports abortion rights, President issues veto.(The Church and Abortion)(Tabare Vasquez)(Brief article)
December 22, 2008... URUGUAYAN PRESIDENT Tabare Vasquez vetoed a decision by the Uruguayan Congress to give women the right to abortion during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy. Abortions had been legal in cases of rape or if a pregnant woman's life was endangered by...

Brazilian women denounced for accessing clandestine abortions.(The Church and Abortion)(Brief article)
December 22, 2008... OVER 1,000 WOMEN AND their partners were publicly denounced for having abortions at a 20-year-old family planning clinic in the state of Mato Grosso Do Sul, Brazil. Additionally, authorities released the names of over 10,000 women who sought...

Bolivian advocates hail abortion ruling.(The Church and Abortion)(Brief article)
December 22, 2008... LAST FALL, HISTORY WAS made in Bolivia as the Bolivian Supreme Court ordered all lower court judges to implement Article 266 of the Penal Code which permits the right to abortion in cases of rape, incest and when a woman's life or health is in...

Guttmacher report finds US abortion rate at 30-year low.(The Church and Abortion)(Guttmacher Institute)(Brief article)
December 22, 2008... ACCORDING TO "TRENDS in the Characteristics of Women Obtaining Abortion, 1974 to 2004," a new report from the Guttmacher Institute, the rate of abortion in the United States is at its lowest level since 1974. The report notes that the rate of...

Bishops fail to sway voters in 2008 election.(The Church and State)(Brief article)
December 22, 2008... IN THE LEAD UP TO THE 2008 US election, nearly 70 bishops issued statements which sought to sway the minds of Catholic voters. A number of these statements overtly denounced prochoice candidates in what may be a violation of the church's...

Tom Kerwin.(The Church and State)(Obituary)(Brief article)
December 22, 2008... Longtime church reform activist, Tom Kerwin, passed away in November. A founding member of Catholics for the Spirit of Vatican II, his passion for all aspects of church reform from women's ordination to reproductive rights was steadfast. An...

Come again?(The Church and State)(Catholic Church's take on same-sex marriage and birth control)
December 22, 2008... "The passage of Proposition 8 in the state of California does not diminish in any way the importance of you, our homosexual brothers and sisters in the church. Nor does it lessen your personal dignity and value as full members of the body of...

Bishops renounce priests for denying communion to Obama supporters.(The Church and State)(Barack Obama)(Brief article)
December 22, 2008... JUST AFTER THE ELECTION, Father Jay Scott Newman of St. Mary's Catholic Church in Greenville, SC, told his parishioners, "Persons [who voted for a prochoice candidate] should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to...

Burke interferes with US politics even from afar.(The Church and State)(Raymond Burke)(Brief article)
December 22, 2008... LAST JUNE, ARCHBISHOP Raymond Burke was promoted from his position at the Diocese of St. Louis to be the Prefect of the Apostolic Signatura in Rome. While still in the United States, Burke was a controversial and conservative figure. In 2004,...

Vatican decries assisted reproductive technology.(The Church and Bioethics)(Brief article)
December 22, 2008... ON DECEMBER 10, THE Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith released its much anticipated document Dignitas Personae, a Vatican instruction on bioethics. In the controversial document, the Vatican denounced innovative practices...

Study finds majority of Catholic students support abortion, contraceptives.(The Church and Contraception)(Brief article)
December 22, 2008... A RECENT STUDY CONDUCTED by QEV Analytics discovered that a majority of students at Catholic colleges and universities disagree with the position of the church hierarchy on sexual and reproductive health. Of those surveyed, 60 percent disagreed...

Austrian Bishop blames other Bishops for promoting Conscience.(The Church and Contraception)(Cardinal Schonborn)(Brief article)
December 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] CARDINAL SCHONBORN, Austria's oldest member of the clergy, has condemned his predecessors for not speaking out against birth control. After the publication of the encyclical Humanae Vitae which denounced...

Caritas hospitals refuse emergency contraception for rape victims.(The Church and Contraception)(Brief article)
December 22, 2008... ACCORDING TO STATE LAW passed in 2005, hospitals in Massachusetts are required to provide emergency contraception to victims of rape. In a recent survey conducted by NARAL ProChoice Massachusetts, a researcher posed as a rape crisis counselor...

Radio ads take on myths about condoms in Catholic and Latino communities.(The Church and Contraception)(National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health)(Brief article)
December 22, 2008... ON DECEMBER I, THE National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health and Catholics for Choice joined forces to launch the first-ever Condoms4Life radio ads. The two Spanish-language ads addressed myths about condom use in Catholic and Latino...

Vatican declares opposition to gay rights.(The Church and Homosexuality)(Brief article)
December 22, 2008... ON THE EVE OF THE 60TH anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Holy See announced its opposition to a declaration highlighting the rights of gay men and women. The declaration, which was proposed by France on behalf of the...

An ethical approach to international aid for reproductive health services: a roundtable conversation.(Broadcast transcript)
December 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Mick Hume, the moderator, is columnist for the Times (London) and editor-at-large of spiked. Thoraya Obaid is the executive director of the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Dr. Anders Nordstrom is the...

Negotiating with people's lives: religion and politics in the PEPFAR negotiations.(President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief)
December 22, 2008... IT WAS THE START OF 2007 AND, for the first time in a dozen years, Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress. President Bush had been chastened. This was the Democrats' chance to get something done. Their newfound power in mind,...

An ethical foreign policy.
December 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I HAVE JUST RECEIVED A LETTER from an Afghan friend of mine who is currently studying in the United States. She joined the victory party in Washington on the night of Barack Obama's election and wrote about the...

Our ideology: invest in women.(OPINION)(Global Fund for Women)
December 22, 2008... AFTER 20 YEARS EXPERIENCE, THE GLOBAL FUND FOR Women is clearer than ever in its vision that investments in women are key to achieving progress for the world as a whole. We know that advancing women's rights--increasing their access to...

Questions about the ethics of doing good.(OPINION)
December 22, 2008... OUR UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT IT MEANS TO DO GOOD has changed over time. For some, individuals and governments who have money and power know what is best for those who don't have money or power. The very fact that one has prospered, whether in the...

Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis: a Roman Catholic view.
December 22, 2008... FROM A ROMAN CATHOLIC PERSPECTIVE there is not strictly speaking a distinctively Catholic position on pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD), or more generally on the status of the embryo. The Roman Catholic church teaches that human beings...

Abortion and women of color: the bigger picture.
December 22, 2008... IN THE UNITED STATES, THE ABORTION rate for black women is almost five times that for white women. Antiabortion activists, including some African-American pastors, are waging a campaign around this fact, falsely asserting that the disparity is...

Catholics the US election and the next four years.
December 22, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WHEN AMERICA WENT TO the polls and elected Barack Obama and Joe Biden as the next president and vice president of the United States, it was an historic moment. As prochoice Catholics, we celebrated the election of a...

An open letter to the president.(Barack Obama)
December 22, 2008... Dear President Obama, The undersigned organizations working to promote women's sexual and reproductive health and rights write to express deep gratitude for your repeal of the Global Gag Rule. We thank you for ending this restrictive...

The inside man: history from a participant's expert perspective.(Catholic Moral Theology in the United States: A History)(Book review)
December 22, 2008... Catholic Moral Theology in the United States: A History Charles E. Curran (Georgetown University Press, 2008, 353PP) 978-1589011960, $26.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] GIVEN HIS EXPERTISE, PRODUCTIVITY, status and comprehensive...

Bookshelf.(Book review)
December 22, 2008... Catholicism without the Guilt Fr Maurice McNeely (Outskirts Press, 2006, 175PP) In his guilt-free approach to the Catholic faith, McNeely examines topics from sexuality to abortion to gambling and concludes that Catholic faith is not...

The roots of progressive Catholicism.(Whose Church? A Concise Guide to Progressive Catholicism)(Book review)
December 22, 2008... Whose Church? A Concise Guide to Progressive Catholicism Daniel C. Maguire (The New Press, 2008, 162pp) 978-1595583352, $23.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] ONE ACCUSATION THAT COULD never be made of Dan Maguire is that he is an...

Fictionalizing the unspeakable.(The Children's Crusade: Scandal at the Vatican)(Book review)
December 22, 2008... The Children's Crusade: Scandal at the Vatican Eugene C. Bianchi (Caritas Communications, 2008, 440pp) 978-0-9799390-2-0, $14.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE SEX-ABUSE SCANDAL HAS been the source of a major crisis of the...

Sexual politics.(Sex in Crisis: The New Sexual Revolution and the Future of American Politics)(Book review)
December 22, 2008... Sex in Crisis: The New Sexual Revolution and the Future of American Politics Dagmar Herzog (Basic Books, 2008, 320pp) 978-0465002146, $26.95 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] DAGMAR HERZOG'S NEW book Sex in Crisis largely focuses on...

Postscript.
December 22, 2008... "There's a difference between someone who is openly racist, and someone who says their personal conviction is one thing while voting is another... We have never really studied [if a prochoice vote constitutes "formal cooperation" in abortion]...