Quotes and news

As from January 1, the Hungarian constitution will protect human life from the moment of conception.

“Human dignity is inviolable,” the constitution states. “Everyone has the right to life and human dignity; the life of a foetus will be protected from conception.

“Eugenic practices aimed at selection of people, making the human body and its parts a source of profit and the reproductive cloning of human beings are prohibited,” the document adds.

The new constitution also states that “Hungary protects the institution of marriage between man and woman, a matrimonial relationship voluntarily established, as well as the family as the basis for the survival of the nation. Hungary supports child-bearing.”

Archbishop condemns corruption ‘distortion’

Archbishop José Domingo Ulloa Mendieta of Panama City in a pastoral letter said:

“There was, there is and there will be corruption as long as accomplices exist, and we are all accomplices if we consider it as something natural, only as something cunning and nothing more. … (Children) have the right to enjoy their childhood, and to grow, you have to give them a possibility… It is time for the parents, the state, civil society organisations, to agree to eliminate this social distortion in our country.”

‘Every Christian must evangelise’ – Pope

Speaking at St John Lateran in Rome Pope Benedict said “the Church – each one of us – must bring the world the Good News that Jesus is Lord. This announcement must resound anew in regions of ancient Christian tradition.” The Pope said Catholics should be educated in prayer to be able to evangelise.

He added: “If mankind forgets God, this is also because Jesus is often reduced to the status of a wise man and his divinity is diminished, if not denied outright. This way of thinking makes it impossible to comprehend the radical novelty of Christianity. If Jesus is not the only Son of the Father, then God did not enter into the history of mankind.”

Religion’s role in US presidential campaign

Religion is expected to play an important role in the 2012 US Presidential campaign according to many of the declared or potential Republican candidates at a meeting sponsored by the Faith and Freedom Coalition. They said they agreed with the coalition’s views on abortion, same-sex marriage and similar social issues.

A survey by Quinnipiac University that asked people to assess their comfort level with the faith of presidential candidates showed that while only 13 per cent would be uncomfortable with a Catholic candidate, 36 per cent of respondents felt somewhat uncomfortable or very uncomfortable with a Mormon candidate, 59 per cent would not be comfortable with a Muslim candidate and 60 per cent said a candidate who was an atheist would make them uncomfortable.

No need to promote Tridentine Mass

Archbishop Mario Conti of Glasgow said in a letter to his priests that there is “no requirement or indeed en­couragement for us to promote the so-called extraordinary form. There is no call for it, or pastoral reason to change what has become the settled practice of the archdiocese.”

He added that most Catholics would find the Novus Ordo Mass less “mysterious” than the extraordinary form.

(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)