The Vatican is conducting a worldwide survey on how parishes deal with sensitive issues such as contraception, divorce and gay couples. The Vatican, through the survey, is asking bishops and parish priests around the world about local views on gay marriage, divorce and birth control ahead of a meeting of bishops next year to discuss Read more
Holly Grigg-Spall is a young woman who calls herself a feminist but who is deeply unpopular with some of the sisterhood right now. English, 30-ish, married to an American and living in California, she has written a book criticising the contraceptive pill. Actually, Sweetening the Pill: Or How We Got Hooked On Hormonal Birth Control is more than Read more
The archdiocese of Washington, DC, has accused the Obama administration in the United States of engaging in a “conscious political strategy to marginalise and delegitimise” Catholic teachings on contraception “by holding them up for ridicule on the national stage”. The accusation is in a lawsuit in which the archdiocese contests the administration’s intention to force Read more
For the faithful it (birth control) is a sad and agonizing issue, for there is a cleavage between the official teaching of the Church and the contrary practice in most families. — Former Patriarch Maximos IV Saigh of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church quoted in What Happened at Vatican II, by John W. O’Malley. Recalling that Thursday was Read more
While pondering last week’s sapphire anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s Humanae Vitae (Of Human Life) and the continuing controversy over the so-called “birth control encyclical” throughout both Church and society, I came across a striking passage in an essay by Polish Nobel laureate Czeslaw Milosz, written shortly before his death in 2004. “Increasingly the institution Read more
A Blenheim woman says her GP refused to give her the birth control pill because she had not yet done her “reproductive job”. Melissa Pont, 23, said her family practitioner, Dr Joseph Lee, would not renew her pill prescription, instead lecturing her on a baby’s right to live and on using the rhythm method. Lee is Read more
The number of abortions performed in New Zealand has fallen to its lowest rate in almost 20 years. Statistics New Zealand figures, released on Wednesday, show a total of 14,745 induced abortions were performed last year, 1118 fewer than in 2011. There were 193 abortions per 1000 known pregnancies last year, compared with 204 the Read more
While Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York spearheads the fight against a new health care law that requires employers to cover birth control in employees’ health insurance, his archdiocese is already paying for contraceptive coverage for thousands of unionised employees. When a New York Times report drew attention to this situation, the archdiocese insisted it Read more
The National Council of Churches (NCC) has not been consulted about a plan to distribute free condoms at National University of Samoa (NUS) according to Father Ioane Ono, Chancellor of Samoa’s Catholic Church. He believes NCC wasn’t asked about the matter because those involved feared what the answer would be. News about the condoms reached him via a Read more
The Catholic Church is opposed to an initiative by the health authorities in Samoa to distribute free condoms on the campus of the National University of Samoa (NUS). In response to recently reported high rate of STDs in Samoa, the NUS School of Nursing, Samoa Family Health Association and Samoa Red Cross have joined forces Read more