convention - CathNews New Zealand

Priest reminds GOP convention of Good Samaritan

Michael — Thu, 21 Jul 2016 17:07:26 +0000

A Catholic priest has reminded the Republican Party national convention in the United States of the parable of the Good Samaritan.

Msgr Kieran Harrington delivered the invocation on the opening night of the convention in Cleveland on July 18.

The prayer lasted three minutes.

The prayer included a request for blessings and inspiration for the delegates and party leaders that their deliberations "might be earnest and fruitful".

Priest reminds GOP convention of Good Samaritan

Defeat for Polish bishops on domestic violence convention

Michael — Thu, 19 Mar 2015 10:05:15 +0000

Poland's Catholic bishops have suffered a defeat with the approval by the nation's president of an international convention combating violence against women.

The Council of Europe convention creates the world's first legal framework for curbing psychological and sexual violence.

It also criminalises forced marriages, stalking, and female genital mutilation.

President Bronislaw Komorowski signed a government bill that will permit the ratification of the 2011 Convention.

In a February statement, the Polish bishops' conference said the convention reflected an "extreme, neo-Marxist ideology of gender".

The convention also seeks to replace a social model linked to Christian tradition and culture with "a model of total liberty and self-realisation arising from a Leftist, secular culture", the bishops said.

The bishops added that the convention said nothing about violence associated with media images, pornography, abortion, alcohol and drug abuse.

Defeat for Polish bishops on domestic violence convention

US government urged to sign up to land mines ban

Michael — Mon, 24 Feb 2014 18:20:35 +0000

Catholic bishops are calling on the United States government to join an international convention banning the use of land mines.

The head of the US bishops' Committee on International Justice and Peace, Bishop Richard Pates, called on President Obama to show leadership by signing up to the 1997 Ottawa Convention.

The bishop did this in a February 12 letter to National Security Adviser Susan Rice.

"Our views are grounded in Church teaching that calls for a ban on landmines on moral grounds since they are indiscriminate weapons that kill and maim innocent civilians during and long after hostilities end," Bishop Pates explained.

His letter calls on the US to ratify the Convention on the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and Their Destruction, also known as the Mine Ban Treaty or the Ottawa Convention.

Currently, 161 countries have signed the convention, including member states of the European Union, Canada, Australia, all of the nations in South America, and most countries in Africa.

The international accord calls for signatory countries to cease the development and production of anti-personnel land mines, destroy its stockpile of land mines within four years, and clear its mined areas within a decade of signing the treaty.

A small number of mines may be retained for the sake of training purposes.

More than 3000 people each year are either killed or maimed by land mines or cluster munitions.

The Vatican is also party to the Ottawa Convention, which it signed in 1997 and ratified soon after.

The US bishops have repeatedly called on the US government to take a similar step.

Sources

US government urged to sign up to land mines ban