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Wednesday, 01 September 2010 09:55 |
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Legislative Tools Include: Bishops’ Legislative Agenda, TCC Testimony and Letters, Resources on Faithful Citizenship
AUSTIN—In preparation for the 82nd Legislative Session, the Texas Catholic Conference (TCC) has launched a new web site designed to provide information and resources on the public policy priorities of the Roman Catholic Bishops of Texas. The new site, still located at www.TXcatholic.org, features user-friendly menu navigation, a more dynamic blog and video archive, and greater search functionality for policy resources, and information on previous legislative sessions.
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Monday, 30 August 2010 09:29 |
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 After 25 years, Bishop Donald Trautman of Erie, Pennsylvania, is stepping down from his duties as episcopal moderator of the Diocesan Fiscal Management Conference (DFMC), the national association of financial leaders of dioceses in the United States and Canada, and will be succeeded by Bishop Kevin Farrell of Dallas. Bishop Farrell will assume the episcopal moderator’s duties at the conclusion of the DFMC’s 41st annual conference in New Orleans, September 26-29. Bishop Trautman asked Cardinal Francis George of Chicago, president of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), to name a replacement.
“It has been an honor and privilege to see firsthand the work of faith filled professionals strengthening the Church in fiscal management,” said Bishop Trautman in a message to the members of DFMC.
Bishop Trautman has served as Episcopal Moderator of the organization since 1985. He has served as bishop of Erie since 1990. Bishop Kevin Farrell has served as bishop of Dallas since 2007 and is also the chairman of the USCCB Committee on National Collections.
The Diocesan Fiscal Management Conference is allied with the USCCB through both its episcopal moderator and the bishops of the dioceses. The DFMC’s ministry is to support the free exchange of best practices, provide on-going professional educational opportunities, and promote both the spiritual development and professional relationships of its members in matters of fiscal and administrative expertise in service to the local and national Church.
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Thursday, 26 August 2010 14:16 |
Written By: Rev. Tadeusz Pacholczyk, Ph.D., NCBC Director of Education
In a major revision to public policy on embryonic stem cell research (ESCR), Federal district judge Royce C. Lamberth on August 23 blocked President Obama’s 2009 executive order that had expanded federal funding for human ESCR. The National Catholic Bioethics Center welcomes this decision.
The plaintiffs bringing the case against the government were Drs. James L. Sherley and Theresa Deisher, researchers whose work focuses on adult, not embryonic stem cell research. They sought an order declaring that the Guidelines for Human Stem Cell Research (which had been issued by the National Institutes of Health in response to President Obama’s executive order expanding stem cell research) are contrary to law, were promulgated without observing the procedures required by law, and constitute “arbitrary and capricious agency action.”
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Thursday, 26 August 2010 09:32 |
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With millions unemployed and U.S. workers experiencing tragedies such as mining deaths in West Virginia and the oil rig explosion and subsequent oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, Americans "must seek to protect the life and dignity of each worker in a renewed and robust economy," said Bishop William Murphy of Rockville Centre, New York. Bishop Murphy addressed these issues in the 2010 Labor Day Statement of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), entitled "A New 'Social Contract' for Today's 'New Things,'" which can be found online in English at the end of this article and Spanish here.
Bishop Murphy, Chairman of the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, compared the challenges faced by today's workers to the changing society of the Industrial Revolution addressed by Pope Leo XIII in the 1891 encyclical, Rerum Novarum (Of New Things).
"America is undergoing a rare economic transformation, shedding jobs and testing safety nets as the nation searches for new ways to govern and grow our economy," said Bishop Murphy. "Workers need a new 'social contract.'" Bishop Murphy said that creating new jobs would require new investments, initiative and creativity in the economy. He also drew on the teachings of Pope Benedict XVI, which call for placing the human person at the center of economic life and emphasize the role of civil society and mediating institutions such as unions in pursing the common good.
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Wednesday, 25 August 2010 10:55 |
Cardinal Daniel DiNardo of Galveston-Houston, chairman of the Committee on Pro-Life Activities of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, welcomed the federal court injunction against the Obama administration’s funding of human embryonic stem cell research, calling the ruling a “victory for common sense and sound medical ethics.” He said this ruling also vindicates the bishops’ reading of the Dickey amendment, the amendment approved by Congress since 1996, which prevents federal funding of research in which human embryos are harmed or destroyed.
“I hope this court decision will encourage our government to renew and expand its commitment to ethically sound avenues of stem cell research,” Cardinal DiNardo added. “These avenues are showing far more promise than destructive human embryo research in serving the needs of suffering patients.”
The full statement follows:
The preliminary injunction against the Obama administration’s funding of human embryonic stem cell research is a welcome victory for common sense and sound medical ethics. It also vindicates a reading of Congress’s statutory language on embryo research that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has defended for more than a decade.
Each year since 1996, Congress has approved the Dickey amendment to forbid funding any “research in which” human embryos are harmed or destroyed. This should ensure that taxpayers are not forced to fund a research project when pursuing that project requires the destruction of human life at its earliest stage. However, beginning with a legal memo commissioned by the Clinton administration in January 1999, this law has been distorted and narrowed to allow federal funding of research that directly relies on such destruction. As the bishops’ conference said in congressional testimony in 1999, “a mere bookkeeping distinction between funds used to destroy the embryo and funds used to work with the resultant cells is not sufficient” to comply with the law. In the health care reform debate, as well, we have pointed out that an executive order by itself cannot change the meaning of a law passed by Congress, and that the longstanding policy against funding health plans that cover abortion is not satisfied, but circumvented, by a bookkeeping distinction that merely segregates accounts within such plans.
A task of good government is to use its funding power to direct resources where they will best serve and respect human life, not to find new ways to evade this responsibility. I hope this court decision will encourage our government to renew and expand its commitment to ethically sound avenues of stem cell research. These avenues are showing far more promise than destructive human embryo research in serving the needs of suffering patients.
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