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March 19, 2018 (Lepanto Institute) – Caritas Internationalis, which is the Vatican-run confederation of Catholic international aid and development agencies, is on the board of directors of The Sphere Project, whose central purpose is to promote a standard handbook for aid and development work. The handbook strongly advocates for the use of contraception, including so-called "emergency" contraceptives for victims of rape. The Sphere Project says that it is: a voluntary initiative that brings a wide range of humanitarian agencies together around a common aim – to improve the quality of humanitarian assistance and the accountability of humanitarian actors to their...

Cardinal Walter Kasper, who spearheaded Communion for the “remarried,” is now arguing that Pope Francis’ refusal to affirm Humanae Vitae’s central teaching in Amoris laetitia may signal his tacit approval of contraception.  In a move predicted by critics of Amoris laetitia, the German theologian suggested that because the Pope’s sprawling 2016 apostolic exhortation on the “joy of love” does not explicitly mention the Church’s proscription of contraception, it may, in fact, be allowed. Italian journalist and veteran Vatican-watcher Sandro Magister writes that Kasper adroitly inserts this argument into his new book on Amoris laetitia, which has been recently published in...

Proposals are being drawn up on “the nature and scope” of introducing a free contraceptive service, Minister for Health Simon Harris has said. He said he would seek approval in a few weeks for a series of measures to further support women and improve access to counseling, contraception and perinatal care. “If our underlying principle is that abortion should be safe, legal and rare, then we must do all we can to reduce the number of crisis pregnancies and to support women in every way,” Mr. Harris added. The Minister was introducing in the Dáil on Friday the Thirty-Sixth Amendment...

ROME, January 31, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – “What the Church teaches about contraception is not a matter of free discussion among theologians,” Pope John Paul II said in 1987. “Teaching the contrary is tantamount to inducing the moral conscience of spouses into error.” These are the words of Pope John Paul II, in an address delivered at a study meeting on responsible procreation, translated into English for the first time this week by LifeSiteNews. In the message, the saintly pontiff also warned against “many” who think that “Christian teaching, although true, is nonetheless unfeasible, at least in some circumstances.” He said...

Humanae vitae, Blessed Pope Paul VI’s encyclical reaffirming the Church’s defense of the sanctity of human life, was promulgated fifty years ago this year. It was dated July 25, 1968. When July rolls around later this year I shall have some things to say, God willing, about the encyclical’s content. What I’m talking about here is some of the aftermath of the document’s promulgation.Only some. I’m going for a broad picture and in as few words as possible. I shall not deal, for instance, with the epic fight of Patrick Cardinal O’Boyle to preserve doctrinal orthodoxy at the Catholic University...

In an interview with news agency Kathpress last week, Msgr. Alejandro Cifres, chief archivist for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, confirmed that a papal commission is reviewing Humanae Vitae, Pope Paul VI's 1968 encyclical reaffirming the Church's teaching on contraception. The admission contradicts earlier Vatican denials that such a commission exists.  In May 2017, Italian journalist Marco Tosatti broke the story that Pope Francis, in collaboration with Pontifical Academy for Life head Abp. Vincenzo Paglia, was "about to appoint — or [may] even have already formed — a secret committee to examine and possibly study changes to the Church's position on contraception," as...

The Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences tweeted yesterday without comment a New York Times article about people using birth control to stop having children because of "climate change" fear.  The alarmist New York Times article said some people are “acutely aware that having a child is one of the costliest actions they can take environmentally” and are therefore using artificial contraception to prevent that from happening.

Aborting Humanae Vitae: How Can the Church Deal with the Bergoglian Quantum Leap? The conventional wisdom is that “this disastrous papacy” lies on a continuum of post-Vatican II ecclesial decline on which Francis represents but the lowest point yet reached.  This is true, but only superficially.  If we look more deeply into the phenomenon that Antonio Socci has dubbed Bergoglianism, we see an actual break with the continuum, a quantum leap into the chaotic realm of the mind of one badly formed Jesuit, fascinated by his own disordered thinking. An analogy to atomic physics struck me as helpful in assessing...

"Humanae Vitae" Under Siege. But It Will Have To Go Over Wojtyla and Caffarra's Dead Bodies > Italiano > English> Español> Français> All the articles of Settimo Cielo in English*Fifty years after its publication, Paul VI’s encyclical “Humanae Vitae” against artificial contraception is now solidly in the overhaul shop, as Settimo Cielo documented in the previous post.And it is evident that Pope Francis’s intention is to bring about the reversal - which means in practice to legitimize contraceptives - in the most soothing manner, as if this were a matter of a natural and proper evolution, devoid of rupture, in...

Pope Francis routinely honours, welcomes, greets, and entertains public sinners. No doubt many see in this imitation of Christ: When the Pharisees saw this, they asked His disciples, “Why does your Teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” ~Matthew 9:11 This makes anyone criticising things like his honouring of Dutch abortion activist Elisabeth Ploumen seem like the Pharisees in the Gospel. But St. Paul commands that the worst sinners are driven out of the community  “But now I have written to you, not to keep company, if any man that is named a brother, be a fornicator, or covetous, or...

On Monday Pope Francis delivered the annual papal address to the diplomatic corps – the Vatican's ambassadors from over 180 nations. His speech focused on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations 70 years ago this past December 10. The pope said, "At a distance of seventy years, it is painful to see how many fundamental rights continue to be violated today." The problem is that the United Nations is not about fundamental rights, but about the rights to revolt from God. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948...

Now We Know Why Pope Francis Destroyed the Pontifical Academy for Life: New Appointee Declares Contraception Can Be a Duty by Christopher A. Ferrara January 13, 2018 It was always obvious why Pope Francis destroyed John Paul II’s Pontifical Academy for Life by sacking its entire membership of 172 persons, ordering the rewriting of its statutes and abolishing the pro-life oath that members were once required to take.  The plan was to convert the Pontifical Academy for Life into a vehicle for furthering his incredible program, now underway, of attempting to undermine the Church’s teaching on the intrinsic evil of...

A prominent Austrian Catholic philosopher has issued a forceful rebuttal to the call of a new member of the Pontifical Academy for Life to allow contraception in some circumstances. Professor Josef Seifert, co-founder of the International Academy of Philosophy (IAP) and a former member of the Pontifical Academy for Life, has said the positions of Fr. Maurizio Chiodi, delivered on Dec. 14, 2017 during a public lecture at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome, contain “disastrous general philosophical errors that have been magisterially and forcefully rejected by Pope John Paul II in Veritatis Splendor.” As LifeSite reported on Monday, the...

Responsible parenthood can obligate a married couple to use artificial birth control, a recently appointed member of the Pontifical Academy for Life has argued, basing his theory on Pope Francis’ apostolic exhortation on the family, Amoris Laetitia. Italian moral theologian Father Maurizio Chiodi said at a December 14 public lecture at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome that there are “circumstances — I refer to Amoris Laetitia, Chapter 8 — that precisely for the sake of responsibility, require contraception.” Chapter 8 of the Pope’s 2016 document on the family has drawn controversy because of its differing interpretations on the issue...

Danish researchers have found there are approximately 13 additional breast cancer cases for every 100,000 women who use hormonal contraception for one year. Women who use hormonal birth control pills and other forms of contraceptives have a small but increased risk of developing breast cancer, a new study from Denmark has found — the latest in a string of dangerous side-effects researchers have discovered about the risks of hormonal contraceptives. The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, followed 1.8 million Danish women for an average of more than 10 years. Of those women, researchers identified 11,517 cases...

The “Fruits” of Contraception Msgr. Charles Pope • November 30, 2017 • In our culture’s current self-examination on sexual harassment and sexual abuse, we would also do well to ponder how the “contraceptive mentality” has contributed to the many sexually related problems of the day. This view insists that there is no necessary connection between sex and having children; it separates what God has joined. This has led to a whirlwind of confusion about the nature and purpose of sexual intimacy as well as about marriage and family. Many treat sex lightly and frivolously; they falsely think that sex...

I recently came across an interesting datum about the priest shortage in this country, especially in the large archdioceses. It seems that the Archdiocese of Los Angeles ordained only seven men in 2017 for well over 4 million Catholics. That reminded me of the kind of vocation data that have plagued the large archdioceses of South America for centuries. So I looked into our other large archdioceses, and I must say the picture is rather stunning.Take the five largest: Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, New York, and Houston. In 2017, these five ordained a total of 33 men to serve a...

The Little Sisters of the Poor, represented by the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, asked the 19th Circuit Court of Appeals Monday to prevent California and Pennsylvania in their attempt to roll back President Trump’s October 6th broadening of religious exemptions for groups, like the Little Sisters, with religious and moral objections to covering contraception.California Attorney General Xavier Becerra sued the Trump administration immediately following the new religious exemptions to the Obamacare contraceptive mandate. The lawsuit claimed the rule change was unconstitutional because it targets and harms women by denying their Fifth Amendment rights to equal protection under the law...

FULL TITLE: Uber for birth control is sparking outrage in conservative states: Pro-life activists are trying to block the app from delivering the morning-after pill to women The birth control app which delivers the morning-after pill to your door is expanding in conservative states - to the ire of pro-life activists and lawmakers. Nurx, a Silicon Valley start-up which launched in 2015, operates in 15 states, offering females over the age of 12 access to the pill, the ring, Plan B and Ella. Its aim is to 'break down obstacles' to getting birth control. While the morning-after pill is already...

IT HAS BEEN 52 years since the Supreme Court ruled, in Griswold v. Connecticut, that government may not ban anyone from using contraceptives. The freedom to use birth control is protected by the Constitution's "fundamental right" to privacy. That freedom is a matter of settled law and hasn't been challenged in the slightest by President Trump or his administration.But you wouldn't know that from the hysteria that erupted when the White House last week acted to uphold the conscience claims of employers who object to funding some types of contraception on sincere moral or religious grounds."The Trump administration just took...