Browsing News Entries
New York Encounter panel: Marriage matters ‘more than ever’ amid falling birth rates
Posted on 02/16/2025 17:40 PM (CNA Daily News - US)

New York City, N.Y., Feb 16, 2025 / 13:40 pm (CNA).
Forecasts that one in three young adults in the U.S. today will never marry signify a closing of the “American heart,” a leading marriage researcher said Saturday.
“Love and marriage have fallen on harder times of late,” observed Brad Wilcox, a sociologist who directs the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, during a panel discussion titled “Why Have Children?” at New York Encounter, an annual conference organized by members of the Catholic movement Communion and Liberation.
Wilcox, author of the 2024 book, “Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization,” was joined in the discussion by Nicholas Eberstadt, chair of political economy at the American Enterprise Institute, and Margarite Mooney, associate professor of congregational studies at Princeton Theological Seminary.
According to Wilcox, the drop in the U.S. fertility rate to well below replacement level is symptomatic of an American culture predicated on “giving people more freedom to live their best lives, often as single people.”
Eberstadt, who researches and writes extensively on demographics and economic development, said that “it’s not impossible when the returns come in for 2024 that the entire planet, on average, will be below replacement fertility.”
Noting a “striking” correlation between falling fertility rates and the proliferation of smartphones, Eberstadt said he is concerned that most people aware of the downward trajectory of fertility “don’t really seem to understand yet what this is going to mean for their society.”
“They certainly haven’t thought about either adapting to this or changing it,” he added.
Yet as young people face such challenges as rising economic inequality and an inability to detach themselves from social media, Wilcox asserted, marriage and family “matter more than ever,” and not just for the sake of children, but for adults, as well.
Drawing from personal experience
In an interview after the panel, Wilcox told CNA that he and his wife, who were married at 24, had hoped for a large Catholic family but struggled with fertility. After four years of marriage, they went on to adopt five children. Then, by surprise, they became pregnant with twins before going on to have two more children.
While Wilcox acknowledged that the growth of his family was “a big adjustment,” and that there have been marked challenges in raising adoptive and biological children, he ultimately described his experience of fatherhood as “magical.”
“I think, really realizing that parenthood just opens up new experiences and new vistas that are before you,” Wilcox reflected. “You really don't see the fullness of life, I think, for many of us, until you've had children and you're raising them and seeing the world through their eyes as well.”

Wilcox shared some practical advice for young people hoping to get married and have children.
“The fundamental point I would make,” he told CNA, “is to think about your dating strategy as intentionally as you do about your education and work.”
Whether at work, church, or somewhere else, he observed, it is ideal to meet and ask people out on dates in the context of a larger social network, “where you’re all on the same team,” and where “you can get a formal thumbs up or thumbs down from friends who know the people.”
The sociologist said he generally disapproves of dating apps because they “can give people an unrealistic expectation about the person that they could meet or should meet.” In his view, when “people are just dating and hanging out with people in a real-world context, it's easier to find a good symmetrical fit.”
Ultimately, he believes, since people are “much more distanced from a marriage-friendly culture” today,” those who do aspire to marriage and family life have to be more intentional about planning to meet people and go on dates.
God has a ‘beautiful plan’
In an interview with CNA, Mooney shared her own experience as a woman who wanted to have children but did not get married until her late forties, encouraging people to remain open to marriage even at an older age.
“Because I came from a family with a lot of children, I always knew that children are a blessing and a joy and a lot of work,” she said. “And as a single person, I just sought out friends like Brad Wilcox, who had large families.” Mooney and Wilcox attended graduate school at Princeton together.
“Maybe I was used to the chaos, and I found it comforting to be with a big family at dinner and crafts happening, and somebody just sits on your lap that you haven't seen in a while,” she said.
“For me,” Mooney told CNA, “when my friends were getting married, and I wasn't, I had to consciously fight any sense of jealousy or even that God was leaving me behind and realize that there's a bit of selfishness in those hurt feelings and that I needed to honor the desire to build relationships with children, but they weren't going to be my biological children.”
Reflecting on her experience, Mooney said she looked to priests and religious men and women who renounced biological children, but maintained their maternal and paternal instincts in their work with children and youths.
“Rather than thinking about the child as fulfilling me,” she reflected, “it was more God fulfilling me through finding a way to express that desire."
Ultimately, she said, marriage and family are not guaranteed. “But I do want women to know that that doesn’t mean God doesn’t have a beautiful plan for your life,” Mooney said.
“Be open,” she advised, “to what joy might come into your life if you reach the age or the situation where you're single or single without children or married without children, and it wasn't what you planned.”
“When you’re older, it’s harder to risk yourself, but you can,” she added.
Catholics hopeful on abortion, health policy after Kennedy’s confirmation as HHS secretary
Posted on 02/16/2025 11:30 AM (CNA Daily News - US)

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 16, 2025 / 07:30 am (CNA).
Prominent U.S. Catholics are expressing optimism after Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s recent confirmation as Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), following an arduous confirmation process which saw him challenged on several issues key to the Catholic Church.
Kennedy, himself a professed Catholic, has faced intense scrutiny from both sides of the aisle for his controversial views on vaccines, abortion, and public health policy since President Donald Trump nominated him to serve as head of HHS.
That position oversees 10 agencies, including the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Ultimately, Kennedy was confirmed on Thursday by a 52-48 vote that was split along party lines with the exception of Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell, the only Republican to vote against him.
Vaccines and medical ethics: where Catholics stand
Since his nomination and throughout his confirmation hearings, Kennedy took the most heat from Democratic senators for his views on vaccines. But some Catholics have praised Kennedy’s commitment to vaccine safety.
Sister Deidre Byrne, who was denied a religious exemption to the COVID-19 vaccination mandate for health care workers in August of 2021, told CNA that “speaking both as a physician and religious,” she was “thrilled” by Kennedy’s confirmation.
“Medically, I agree with [Kennedy’s] concerns,” Byrne, who is widely known as Sister Dede, said via email. She cited “vaccines and the lack of proper research, and then forcing, for example, the COVID-19 vaccine, which had no scientific basis behind it and [has] injured thousands.”
Byrne expressed gratitude over Kennedy’s pledge to conduct studies on the safety of abortion pills such as mifepristone, which were partially deregulated under the Biden administration.
“Now they are giving this abortion pill online without a physician's evaluation or ultrasound,” she said, describing the practice as “extremely dangerous and malpractice.”
“So I thank God for President Trump and I thank God that [Kennedy] was confirmed to run HHS,” Byrne concluded.
A representative for the largest collective of Catholic healthcare workers, Catholic Medical Association (CMA), echoed Byrne, telling CNA the organization is looking forward to collaborating with Kennedy and the Trump administration.
“The Catholic Medical Association looks forward to working closely with the Trump administration and Secretary Kennedy in a shared mission to promote and protect ethical medicine,” CMA Board Chairman of the Health Care Policy Committee Dr. Tim Millea told CNA.
“CMA is committed to foundational principles of health care: the inherent dignity of every human life from conception to natural death; the biological reality of two sexes; and, the protection of conscience rights and religious freedom for health care professionals,” he continued.
“We are anxious to see Secretary Kennedy’s attention to correcting HHS policies that have been in direct conflict with optimal and rational health care methods over the past several years. It is time to return to medicine practiced as it should be, and not directed by ideology.”
Optimism: How Catholics are responding to Kennedy’s shifting views on abortion
Despite Kennedy’s past support of abortion, many pro-life Catholics are now celebrating his confirmation after he pledged to carry out the Trump administration’s pro-life agenda as head of HHS.
“There was a lot to appreciate in RFK Jr.’s testimony during the confirmation process,” said Students for Life Action President Kristan Hawkins. “A highlight of [his] very intense conversations with members of the U.S. Senate was the fact that he and President Trump see abortion as a tragedy and that they are looking at the real and deadly impacts of the abuse of agency power to force chemical abortion pills on the market.”
“I agree with President Trump that every abortion is a tragedy,” Kennedy stated during a hearing with the Senate Finance Committee. “I agree with him that we cannot be a moral nation if we have 1.2 million abortions per year, I agree with him that the states should control abortion.”
“I’m going to serve at the pleasure of the president, [and] I’m going to implement his policies,” he said, revealing that Trump had expressed his desire for Kennedy to end late-term abortions, enact protections for conscience exemptions, and end federal funding for abortions in the U.S. and abroad.
Kennedy also spoke out against the use of fetal tissue for stem cell research during the hearing, telling Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, “I will protect stem cell research, and today stem cell research can be done on umbilical cords.”
“You don’t need fetal tissue,” he added.
Kennedy has vowed to combat nationwide food health crisis
A major touchstone of Kennedy’s vision for transforming health in the U.S. is the fight to reduce consumption of highly processed foods, chemicals, additives, and seed oils.
The founder of a growing grassroots movement among Catholics spoke to CNA on how Kennedy’s confirmation could boost support for local farms and homesteads.
Michael Thomas, co-founder of the Catholic Land Movement, is enthusiastic about Kennedy’s confirmation, telling CNA in an interview that he looks forward to the new HHS leader’s proposed public health reforms and the benefits they could have for small farms.
“The Catholic Land Movement is excited about the rhetoric we’ve seen from RFK around American health and the prohibition of harmful additives and processes,” he said. “However, it is not enough to just restrict the bad, we must support the good.”
According to Thomas, there is much to be hopeful about with Kennedy’s confirmation. Giving the example of Kennedy’s desire to replace seed oils with beef tallow in deep-fryers across the U.S., Thomas pointed out that a new market could be created for small American farms to provide the alternative.
“As an organization on the front line of small farms and American Homesteads, we are enthusiastic to work on a restoration of local and regenerative agriculture with this administration and we are eager to see and hopeful to participate in detailing that policy course,” he added.
Ecologists at center dedicated to St. Kateri help children integrate faith and nature
Posted on 02/16/2025 10:00 AM (CNA Daily News - US)

CNA Staff, Feb 16, 2025 / 06:00 am (CNA).
When Kathleen Hoenke and William Jacobs aren’t working as professional ecologists by day in their secular jobs, they’re using their backgrounds to serve the Saint Kateri Conservation Center, a national Catholic nonprofit that promotes faith, ecology, biodiversity, and climate resiliency — especially with the next generation.
The two colleagues have written a new book titled “God Made That!” that aims to inspire kids to explore nature, deepen their faith, and discover the beauty of God’s creation. It introduces a Catholic perspective on ecology, with accessible explanations of how Scripture, the saints, and Church teaching encourage care for creation.
The book also includes interactive features such as nature journal prompts, saint profiles, prayers, and hands-on activities, inspiring readers to actively explore their surroundings and reflect on their faith.
“The separation of science and faith doesn’t give young people an integral view of creation,” Jacobs, the founder and senior ecology adviser at the center, told CNA. “And we want young people — especially today, it’s so important when everything is so secularized — we want young people to have an integral view of creation that includes God.”

Through several different programs, the Saint Kateri Conservation Center helps Catholics and their parishes across the U.S. to strengthen their relationships with God and creation. These programs include Saint Kateri Habitats, a Catholic Ecology Library, an Indigenous Peoples Program, a Catholic Land Trust, and their newest program, Parish Arks.
The aim of the Parish Arks program is to encourage parishes to create mini arks of faith and biodiversity as well as to conserve 30% of a parish’s open land and water to rewild their habitat for biodiversity.
The name of the program was inspired by Noah’s Ark and the Blessed Virgin Mary as the Ark of the New Covenant.
“I think Parish Arks really presents an opportunity to work within parish communities to create a deeper understanding of living within Laudato Si’,” said Hoenke, who serves as the executive director and spatial ecologist at the center.
“When we look at the landscapes around us, you would expect — if we were to really live within our faith and what integral ecology is — you would expect a Catholic parish to be the place that you would look to and see an area that’s very biodiverse with lots of native vegetation and living in harmony with creation,” she explained. “But what we really see are lawns everywhere you look.”
With this in mind, the Parish Arks program will work to guide parishes to rewild their lawns, meaning to restore an area of land to its natural, uncultivated state. The guidance given to the parishes will also be shared with their parishioners and incorporated into curriculums of any parish schools so that the entire community can take part in the process.
Hoenke pointed out the importance of incorporating school-aged children into their various programs, because the more you teach these concepts to children at a young age, “the more you’ll develop children’s strong faith but also [teach them] how to live in harmony with creation.”
Some ideas Hoenke offered families who want to get their children thinking about God and creation include making a Marian garden in the backyard, planting flowers, making a rosary out of wildflowers, or simply praying outside.
“I really think the first step is to really help them to notice what’s going on around them at a deeper level,” she shared.
Jacobs said he hopes that through the new book and the work being done at the Saint Kateri Conservation Center, children will “recognize that God as the Holy Spirit is present and active throughout creation and upholds life at every moment. So, we have science but we also have faith, and the two work together.”
New York Encounter: Technology is costing us our humanity, experts say
Posted on 02/15/2025 21:16 PM (CNA Daily News - US)

New York City, N.Y., Feb 15, 2025 / 17:16 pm (CNA).
Technology is robbing us of our humanity, turning humans in some respects into “disembodied” minds, Paolo Carozza, professor of law at the University of Notre Dame, warned Saturday during a panel discussion at this year’s New York Encounter.
Such a notion might have sounded like science fiction not so long ago. But this “disembodiment” — or “forgetting the centrality of the human body,” as Carozza put it — defines who we are as a culture today, thanks to technological advances that have made things increasingly and enticingly convenient, he said.
Carozza, serving as moderator, was joined on the panel by Christine Rosen, author of “The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World,” and Notre Dame law professor and bioethicist O. Carter Snead, author of “What It Means to Be Human: The Case for the Body in Public Bioethics.”
Held at the Metropolitan Pavilion in New York City’s Chelsea neighborhood, New York Encounter is an annual, wide-ranging cultural conference organized by members of the Catholic movement Communion and Liberation. The three-day event, which is free and livestreamed online, concludes Sunday.
In their conversation, Carozza, Rosen, and Snead focused on the extent to which human experience has become an increasingly isolated affair.
“I’d rather summon a car with a press of a button, never talk to the driver, and be dropped off at my location. I would like to have my food dropped on my doorstep, never having to look in the eye at the people who prepared it or delivered it,“ Rosen said, summing up today’s predilection toward convenience.
In addition, time spent on social media, she said, is more than simply time wasted but changes the way we see ourselves and our relation to others.
“We begin to prefer mediated communication to face-to-face communication. We begin to mistrust our own emotional responses to things unless they’re reflected on a social media page and we get enough likes for them. In that sense, we’re habituating ourselves to a deeply disembodied way of seeking approval, of understanding the world we live in,” she said.
“I think in very mundane ways, our daily experience has deteriorated because of this mindset, which grew not with any nefarious intent, but over time. We have habits of mind that have formed,” Rosen said.
“You step on a subway platform and people are more rude. There seems to be more hostility and anger and impatience,” she said.
Indifference to the vulnerable
Society’s most vulnerable, including the elderly and children, bear the brunt of this disembodied habit of being, Rosen observed.
She cited the example of a “telepresence” robot delivering a fatal cancer diagnosis to a patient in a hospital and a Japanese nursing home that provides its residents with robotic animals to simulate the comfort of the human touch.
That preference for convenience and avoidance of face-to-face encounters impedes human flourishing, according to Snead.
“The virtues that you need to flourish as an embodied human being embedded in networks of giving and receiving are missed as well. If you think of life as a consumer, you’re not thinking about the virtues of uncalculated giving, just generosity, hospitality, misericordia, which is accompanying others in their suffering as if it’s your own suffering,” he said.
The consequences of this selfishness result in the instrumentalization of others, with fatal consequences, Snead said. He pointed to advances in reproductive technology that allow for the selection of embryos based on IQ (and the elimination of those deemed insufficiently intelligent), as well as assisted suicide legislation that has a bias in favor of encouraging elderly patients to end their lives rather than treating their psychiatric disorders.
Snead said the parents of these embryos can’t be blamed for being blind to the immorality of such technology as certain expectations have arisen from the culture and its legal system.
The appeal of reproductive technology, he said, is not unlike that of technologies that promise consumers they will take into account their personal preferences.
“If you’re thinking about everything in your life as a drop-down menu to order the thing exactly as you want it,” he said, “then you’re irritated when you get something that you didn’t ask for and DoorDash brings you the wrong thing or doesn’t bring the sauce with your burrito or whatever.”
Live in the world you want
All is not lost, however, according to Rosen and Snead. There is hope that we can retrieve what has been lost, but it means rejecting some of the technological conveniences we have come to expect.
“I think we have to just have to have more awareness and thoughtfulness about the world we want to live in, not just the one that we happen to be living in now,” Rosen said.
“At the individual level, you always choose the human. Choose the face-to-face. Embrace the idea that this will be inconvenient and annoying,” she said. “And you have to put on clothes and pants and get out of the house, and wish [people] ‘happy birthday’ to their face, not just because Facebook reminded you it was their birthday.”
Snead suggested we take to heart the words of St. Teresa of Calcutta.
“She said that the reason that we have so much trouble in the world is because we’ve forgotten that we belong to one another. The idea of belonging to one another, even people, it takes some moral imagination to understand how you belong to people that you don’t know, or that you see lying on the street, or that you see in a wheelchair, or someone that doesn’t look like you,” he said.
“It seems to me that for our part, [the way] to recover the genuine vision of friendship and embodied love and friendship and hospitality is through the practice of it,” Snead said. “It’s in your interpersonal relationships. Talk to somebody, interact with somebody, give somebody a hug — with their permission.”
He added: “When we debate and deliberate over regulatory frameworks or statutes or whatever, we should be mindful of the reality of what a human being is and what human flourishing is.”
New animated film honors legacy of 21 Coptic Martyrs on 10th anniversary of their martyrdom
Posted on 02/15/2025 12:00 PM (CNA Daily News - US)

CNA Staff, Feb 15, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).
On Feb. 15, 2015, ISIS militants brutally executed 21 Coptic Christian prisoners on a beach in Libya. Now, on the 10th anniversary of their martyrdom, a short animated film called “The 21” is honoring these 21 men who died because of their unwillingness to deny their faith in Jesus Christ.
The 13-minute short, animated film was made by MORE Productions in collaboration with the global Coptic community. Actor Jonathan Roumie, best known for his portrayal of Jesus in the hit series “The Chosen,” served as the film’s executive producer.
“The 21” can be viewed for free on www.the21film.com from Feb. 14–17. After that viewers will have to provide an email in order to get access to watch it.
Mark Rodgers, founder of MORE Productions, visited Egypt in 2019 and felt called to create a film that highlighted the spiritual victory of the martyrs. “The 21” presents an accurate narrative of the men’s abduction, detention, and execution. It was developed based on extensive research and multiple conversations with family members, friends, and Coptic clergy who knew the 21 men.
Original music was composed and recorded by the Ayoub Sisters, classically trained musicians who incorporate Coptic hymns and liturgy into their music.
The film is also unique in that it uses neo-Coptic iconography. Tod Polson, former creative director at Cartoon Saloon, led a team of over 70 world-class artists from more than 70 countries over the course of five years to create the film’s animation style.
“As Christians, we know that death is not the end, nor even the greatest thing to fear. These brave men’s stories need to be told and shared so that the world will know in whom we find the ultimate example of hope … one that is never extinguished,” Roumie said in a press release.
“It’s up to those of us in the creative community to make films like this to spotlight and honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice for their faith: martyrs (and their families) who have shown the rest of us what discipleship truly means and what sainthood looks like,” he added. “God’s love transcends and renews all things.”
In May 2023, Pope Francis added the Coptic men to the Roman Martyrology, the Catholic Church’s official list of saints, recognizing them as martyrs. This was the first time in history that Coptic Christians were recognized as martyrs by the Catholic Church.
Eden Invitation founder: Chastity helps us view people as ‘worthy of reverence and dignity’
Posted on 02/14/2025 23:00 PM (CNA Daily News - US)

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 14, 2025 / 19:00 pm (CNA).
A Catholic ministry called Eden Invitation is working to “create space to receive the whole person” for people with LGBTQ+ experiences. Founders Anna Carter and Shannon Ochoa said they started the organization to form a community of Christians who want to stay close to God and their faith but experience discord in their desires and attractions.
Carter, the ministry’s president, explained in a Valentine’s Day “EWTN News Nightly” interview that these experiences don’t need to be “a cause for shame” but rather can be “an invitation to surrender more deeply to Jesus in your life.”
“I recognized in high school that I experienced attraction to other women. But I also was really into youth group and had these beautiful experiences of prayer and community, and I knew that the Church was home.”
Carter said she realized, “OK, this isn’t really going away.” So she asked herself: “How do I work this out? What does discipleship look like? What does friendship look like? What does vocation look like in the midst of all of this?”
She said Eden Invitation flowed out of that, “really trying to create community for other people wrestling with sexuality and gender in the Church and world today.”
The group now operates across the nation with members who describe themselves as “disciples with LGBTQ+ experiences, building community with others who desire a way of life in congruence with Christ and his Church.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church defines chastity as “the successful integration of sexuality within the person and thus the inner unity of man in his bodily and spiritual being.”
Carter commented on this definition and the act of being chaste, saying that we need an “awareness of our body and soul and the reality that has for our sexual relationships.”
“Also, I think being aware of these places where we do experience discord and desires, being honest about that, and bringing all of that to God,” she added.
During her “EWTN News Nightly” interview, Carter was asked what her response is to young adults questioning their attractions and desires.
“To have increased vulnerability in some of your close relationships, and that this doesn’t have to actually be an obstacle to your holiness, but maybe this is actually a means that Jesus is inviting you to keep surrendering to him and just continuing to move forward in your life and discipleship,” she said.
“I think that as we grow in chastity, as a virtue, it’s about developing these habits of using our reason and our intellect within our desires. There’s a lot that can be gained as we grow in self-discipline in our lives.”
“I also think it affects the way we see other people, not just as objects for our own pleasure or own use but as people worthy of reverence and dignity.”
Carter further discussed the virtue of chastity in a recent Eden Invitation blog post where she expressed that living a chaste life goes beyond sexuality. She referenced Pope Francis’ description of chastity where he said that it “is freedom from possessiveness in every sphere of one’s life.”
“Only when love is chaste is it truly love,” the pontiff said.
Referring to Valentine’s Day, Carter concluded her “EWTN News Nightly” interview by saying: “I think, especially on Valentine’s Day, there can be a lot of mixed feelings if you find yourself in particular states of life. Stay close to the Lord, because no matter what your state of life is in this moment, that’s the place that God has you and that God wants to meet you.”
Fertility rates show pro-life laws saved 22,000 lives in 2023, study finds
Posted on 02/14/2025 22:05 PM (CNA Daily News - US)

CNA Staff, Feb 14, 2025 / 18:05 pm (CNA).
Here is a roundup of recent pro-life- and abortion-related news.
Pro-life policies save lives, study finds
Following the adoption of pro-life laws protecting unborn children across many states, a recent study found there were more births than anticipated in the United States — more than 22,000 additional births.
A Feb. 13 study published on JAMA Network analyzed the impact of recent pro-life laws by looking at state-level fertility information from 2012 to 2023. The study found that fertility rates increased in 2023 — the first full year after the U.S. Supreme Court put abortion issues back into the hands of the states.
The number is a powerful indication of the impact of pro-life laws, according to pro-life expert Michael New, a senior associate scholar at the Charlotte Lozier Institute and assistant professor of practice at the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America.
But this week, National Public Radio drew attention to reports by nearly a dozen pro-life states that reported zero or very few abortions in 2023, pointing out that these official records do not account for illegal abortions.
Many factors impact abortion data tracking. Chemical abortions via abortion pills have become increasingly accessible as the FDA has decreased regulations such as in-person requirements for prescriptions. Meanwhile, the rise of shield laws — implemented by pro-abortion state governments such as California, Colorado, New York, and others — helps protect abortionists who send abortion drugs via mail to women and girls in states where the drug is restricted or illegal.
But New noted that “in the post-Dobbs era, the most accurate way to analyze the impact of pro-life laws is through birth data.”
“That is because some women are able to circumvent pro-life laws by obtaining abortions in other states, obtaining abortions in other countries, acquiring chemical abortion pills through mail, or getting abortions outside the formal health care system,” New told CNA. “As such, the abortion statistics released by state health departments may not reflect the actual incidence of abortion.”
“However, if more babies are being born after pro-life laws take effect, that is powerful statistical evidence that more unintended pregnancies are being carried to term — and lives are being saved — as a result of the pro-life law,” New said.
In fact, given the limitations of the study, New suspects it “undercounts the lives saved to some extent” because it considers only abortion bans and heartbeat acts, not additional post-Dobbs gestational age limits.
Maternal mortality reaches lowest point since 2018
This week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported an almost 17% decrease in the maternal mortality rate in 2023 — its lowest point since 2018.
The maternal mortality rate dropped to 18.6 deaths per 100,000 live births from 22.3 in 2022, according to a February report by the National Center for Health Statistics. This continues a trend in decreasing maternity mortality rates since 2022, when Roe v. Wade was overturned and many states began to institute protections for unborn children.
While pro-abortion advocates have expressed concerns that increasing abortion restrictions harm women’s health, mortality rates are on a steady decline, according to the CDC data.
From 2018 to 2019, maternal deaths had increased, peaking in 2021 and then decreasing in 2022 and 2023. The statistics includes a woman dying while pregnant as well as of pregnancy-related causes within 42 days of an abortion.
The maternal mortality rate decreased for all racial demographics except for Black women, among whom there was a slight increase, which the CDC noted was not statistically significant. Though, notably, the number has not decreased with the other demographics. Asian women also had a statistically insignificant decrease in maternal mortality, according to the study.
Texas and Louisiana slap $100,000 fine, extradition order, on New York doctor who mailed abortion pills
Texas and Louisiana — states with many laws protecting unborn children from abortion — issued a $100,000 fine and an extradition order, respectively, to a New York doctor who mailed abortion pills illegally into the state.
New York on Thursday rejected the request from Louisiana to extradite the doctor who was charged by Louisiana with prescribing abortion pills to a pregnant minor. A Texas judge the same day ordered the same doctor to stop prescribing and sending abortion pills to patients in Texas and to pay a penalty of more than $100,000.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul refused to honor Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill’s request to arrest and send Dr. Margaret Carpenter, who was indicted last month by a Louisiana grand jury, to Louisiana.
While Texas and Louisiana have strong protections for unborn babies, New York has a “telemedicine abortion shield law” protecting abortion providers who send telehealth abortion pills to women and girls in states where it is illegal or restricted. Abortionists have sent more than 10,000 abortion pills per month to patients in states with restrictions on abortion under the shield laws, according to the New York Times.
Texas Judge Bryan Gantt of Collin County District Court signed an order permanently banning Carpenter from prescribing abortion drugs to Texas residents. But New York’s shield law prohibits cooperation with out-of-state legal actions, so Carpenter did not respond to the suit nor appear for the hearing.
Democrats push restrictions for crisis pregnancy centers
Democratic lawmakers are pushing for the federal government to regulate pregnancy resource centers with the “Stop Anti-Abortion Disinformation (SAD) Act.” Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Rep. Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon reintroduced the SAD Act on Thursday.
The SAD Act is designed to enable the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to regulate pregnancy centers designed to support women to choose life. The bill would allow the FTC to take disciplinary actions against pregnancy clinics by levying fines for “misleading” or providing “false” information about abortion or contraception.
With a Republican majority in Congress, the bill is unlikely to pass. Pregnancy resource centers outnumber abortion clinics in the U.S., offering pregnant women support and resources, and providing an alternative to abortion.
The nearly 3,000 pro-life pregnancy resource centers in the United States provided nearly $367.9 million worth of life-affirming pregnancy services and material goods to clients and their families in 2022, a 2024 report found.
Vance draws attention to lack of religious freedom, free speech in Europe
Posted on 02/14/2025 21:35 PM (CNA Daily News - US)

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Feb 14, 2025 / 17:35 pm (CNA).
U.S. Vice President JD Vance called attention to deteriorating religious freedom and free speech rights in Western liberal democracies throughout Europe during an address to the Munich Security Conference (MSC) in Germany on Friday.
“I come here today not just with an observation but with an offer,” Vance said in a speech to hundreds of high-ranking European leaders, including heads of state and European Union officials.
“Just as the [President Joe] Biden administration seemed desperate to silence people for speaking their minds, so the [President Donald] Trump administration will do precisely the opposite, and I hope that we can work together on that,” Vance continued.
“In Washington, there is a new sheriff in town, and under Donald Trump’s leadership, we may disagree with your views — but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square,” he added.
Rather than focusing his remarks on external threats to European security, Vance warned about internal threats, particularly “the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values — values shared with the United States of America.”
During Vance’s address, he received scattered applause from a handful of attendees. However, most of the time the majority of European leaders blankly stared at the American vice president, not vocalizing either approval or disapproval of his comments.
Religious persecution and speech laws
The vice president referenced several areas of concern, including arrests in the United Kingdom for silent prayer near abortion clinics, a Swedish court convicting a Christian activist “for participating in Qur’an burnings that resulted in his friend’s murder,” a court annulling the Romanian election results, and the expansion of hate speech laws throughout the continent.
Vance specifically mentioned the case of Adam Smith-Connor, who was convicted in a British court for silently praying outside of an abortion clinic for his unborn son who died in an abortion that he helped procure two decades prior.
“The British government charged [him] … with the ‘heinous’ crime of standing 50 meters from an abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes,” Vance said. “Not obstructing anyone, not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.”
On the same subject, Vance called out the Scottish government for its “safe access zones” law around abortion clinics, which prohibits “religious preaching” and “silent vigils” geared toward discouraging abortion within 200 meters of a clinic.
In some circumstances, the law can apply to activities on one’s own property and within one’s own home if it can be seen or heard within the zone, according to The Telegraph. The Scottish government sent letters to residents who live within the zones to inform them of this law.
“The government urged readers [of the letters] to report any fellow citizen suspected guilty of [a] thought crime,” Vance said. “In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.”
Vance discussed the conviction of Swedish citizen Salwan Najem, an immigrant from Iraq, for participating in a Qur’an burning. His friend, Salwan Momika, was murdered for participating in the burning.
Referencing the court decision, the vice president said the judge determined that “Sweden’s laws to supposedly protect free expression do not, in fact, grant … ‘a free pass to do or say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.’”
Vance repeatedly condemned the Constitutional Court of Romania for annulling a democratic election in November 2024 in which independent candidate Călin Georgescu qualified for the runoff after leading in the first round of voting. He also chastised the European Court of Human Rights for rejecting the appeal from Georgescu, who is an outspoken Orthodox Christian and critic of Ukraine.
According to Vance, the courts “straight up canceled the results of a presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions of an intelligence agency and enormous pressure from its continental neighbors.” The courts claimed Russia used advertisements to influence the election.
“If your democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars of digital advertising from a foreign country, then it wasn’t very strong to begin with,” Vance said.
The vice president also criticized hate speech laws throughout Europe, saying the European Union “warned citizens that they intend to shut down social media during times of civil unrest — the moment they spot what they judge to be ‘hateful content,’” in reference to the Digital Services Act.
Vance compared these modern-day European policies to the Soviet Union censoring dissidents, closing churches, and canceling elections.
“You cannot win a democratic mandate by censoring your opponents or putting them in jail, whether that’s the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news,” the vice president said. “Nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate on questions like who gets to be a part of our shared society.”
During his speech, Vance also criticized “out of control” mass migration into Europe and said the United States is looking to “come to a reasonable settlement between Russia and Ukraine.” He also said it is “important in the coming years for Europe to step up in a big way to provide for its own defense.”
The vice president, who is Catholic, concluded his speech with a quote from St. John Paul II, whom he called “one of the most extraordinary champions of democracy on this continent or any other.”
“Do not be afraid,” he said, quoting the former pontiff. “We should not be afraid of our people, even when they express views that disagree with their leadership.”
Catholic leaders push for $10 billion federal school choice program
Posted on 02/14/2025 18:45 PM (CNA Daily News - US)

CNA Staff, Feb 14, 2025 / 14:45 pm (CNA).
Catholic leaders have voiced support for a bill that would establish a federal tax credit to expand school choice in K–12 education.
If passed, the Educational Choices for Children Act (ECCA), introduced at the end of January during National School Choice Week and National Catholic Schools Week, would provide $10 billion in tax incentives for those who contribute to nonprofits that provide education scholarships for K–12.
The program is designed to encourage individuals and businesses to donate by offering tax credits for donations to Scholarship Granting Organizations (SGOS), non-private 501c3s that provide scholarships for eligible students to attend qualifying K–12s. The program would also help assist students in public, private, and home school with tuition, fees, books, and educational materials. A companion version of the bill has been introduced in the House.
School choice programs help low- and middle-income families send their children to private schools of their choice, including the nearly 6,000 Catholic schools across the nation. Following a record expansion of state school choice programs in 2023, the National Catholic Educational Association found that more than 1 in 10 Catholic school students used school choice programs to help them attend Catholic school in the 2023-2024 school year. While the number of states offering school choice programs has rapidly risen in recent years, these programs are only in select states.
Numerous bishops and Catholic conferences throughout the U.S. have pushed for the ECCA, highlighting that it supports parental rights, education access, and religious freedom across the United States.
Bishop Michael Burbidge of Arlington, Virginia, on Feb. 6 encouraged lawmakers to implement legislation that “provides for an ever-greater spectrum of educational choice for families.”
“As Catholics, we know the crucial role that Catholic schools serve in support of parents, the first and primary educators of their children, by providing enriching and morally robust choices — especially for all those who experience economic or other challenges that would otherwise put a high-quality private education out of reach,” Burbidge wrote.
“Greater educational choice for families is good for everyone, as the experience of so many states shows, and what is good for individual families and their children is also good for our whole nation,” Burbidge continued.
The U.S. bishops voiced support for the act in a Jan. 30 letter to U.S. Sen. Dr. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, and Rep. Adrian Smith, R-Nebraska, who introduced the legislation following Trump’s executive order on expanding school choice programs.
The head of the U.S. bishops’ Committee on Catholic Education, Bishop David O’Connell, CM, of Trenton, New Jersey, in a Jan. 30 letter welcomed the proposed legislation, citing its affirmation of parental rights in education and its protections of religious freedom.
He said the legislation is necessary to combat “anti-Catholic” Blaine Amendments that prohibit public funding of religious schools and leave Catholic families “cut off from school choice at the state level.”
“The Educational Choice for Children Act is vital for families across the country who have little to no access to school choice in part due to a history of anti-Catholic bigotry,” O’Connell said.
“Thirty-seven state constitutions still have ‘Blaine Amendments’ that prohibit public funding of religious schools, so named after the nakedly anti-Catholic attempt by Sen. [James] Blaine to amend the U.S. Constitution in 1875 to deny support to ‘sectarian’ schools,” he said.
“Opponents of parental choice continue to use Blaine Amendments to limit access to children’s educational options,” O’Connell said. “Amid ongoing litigation to resolve these issues in several states, there are still millions of children across the country who have no access to school choice.”
Several Catholic Conferences including California, Illinois, Kansas, Connecticut, and Washington state encouraged Catholics to urge legislators to support the ECCA.
New York chancellor who met with Trump ‘hopeful’ it will pass
After attending a White House roundtable on the ECCA that included Republican governors, religious leaders, and education reform advocates to discuss the ECCA, the chancellor of the Archdiocese of New York, John Cahill, said he was “hopeful” the bill would pass.
Cahill, who met with President Donald Trump, said during a Feb. 4 “Conversations with Cardinal Dolan” interview that the president was “very interested” in making sure the act is included in the omnibus budget bill within the next 100 days.
Cahill said the House is likely to have the votes, while the Senate “we probably still need to do some work on.”
“We are in the best position to get some help from Washington on this,” Cahill added. “The president was very keen on the crisis that we have in the education system, a monopoly that, for the most part, failed during COVID.”
Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York said in the same interview that the ECCA “really is a start” for increasing school choice for parents amid school closures in the Archdiocese of New York.
Dolan applauded the school choice legislation in an opinion piece for the New York Post, noting that “expanding education freedom with school choice must be one of the solutions to improve education for all children, regardless of where they attend school.”
The bill protects private or religious schools from being excluded from the scholarship program and also prohibits government officials from mandating or controlling those schools.
Cahill noted that the bill had support from legislators and governors of various faiths and that the focus was on increasing education options.
“This was all about choice of education for parents to do what’s best for the kids and had support geographically and demographically across our country,” Cahill said.
Catholic welfare group says U.S. funding cuts won’t affect ministry
Posted on 02/14/2025 18:00 PM (CNA Daily News - US)

CNA Staff, Feb 14, 2025 / 14:00 pm (CNA).
A major global Catholic aid group says the recent funding cuts at the U.S. government will not affect its globe-spanning ministries in India, Africa, and elsewhere.
Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA) said in a Thursday press statement that the Trump administration’s slashing of funding for the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) “will neither curtail nor limit” the group’s ministries across several continents.
CNEWA serves communities “scattered throughout the historic but unstable lands of the ancient Eastern churches” — specifically in the Middle East, northeast Africa, India, and Eastern Europe.
The group distributes emergency relief to churches that require it while also supporting the formation and development of Church leaders including clergy and religious. It supports communities ranging from the Syro-Malabar Catholic Church in India to the Coptic, Eritrean, and Ethiopian Catholic Churches in Africa.
CNEWA president Monsignor Peter Vaccari said on Thursday that the group’s work “is in no danger of being halted” after the USAID cuts, which have caused chaos among religious aid and nonprofit groups who have relied heavily on the funds for their budgets.
Vaccari said the broader concern of the funding cuts is not for CNEWA but for the churches and communities the group serves.
“The generosity of the American people is extraordinary, and the U.S. government has been a major source of humanitarian aid, providing essential services throughout CNEWA’s world,” he said in the release.
The priest said the group strives “to avoid the current globalization of indifference.” He thanked supporters “for being with us as we touch countless lives in incalculable ways, always mindful of the great command of Jesus in the parable of the good Samaritan: ‘Go and do likewise.’”
‘The Church remains present’
CNEWA spokesman Michael La Civita told CNA on Friday that the group is anticipating a major spike in aid requests as funding dries up at the regional level.
The majority of CNEWA’s funding comes from private donations, he said. But the communities they serve are heavily dependent on foreign aid.
“Where we work, the fallout is significant,” he said. “Even though it may be temporary, the aid has stopped.”
There are “large populations where we work — say for example Lebanon or Jordan — where about half the population is refugees,” he said. Those communities are “dependent on foreign assistance, whether it’s through the United Nations or through organizations that are funded by foreign entities like the United States.”
The cessation of funding, he said, means medicine and health care and foodstuffs and other critical aid will dry up as well.
“What will happen, and what is already happening, is that the requests for assistance to make up for the shortfalls will be significant,” he said. Requests for aid are already increasing in Jordan and Lebanon, he said, as well as in Ethiopia, where Catholic Relief Services — a major recipient of USAID funding — has been active in food distribution.
La Civita said fundraising in the current environment is “getting increasingly more difficult,” though he said that Americans, especially American Catholics, are “extremely generous.”
“We have a history of understanding that as Catholics, we’re not members of a congregation but members of a worldwide communion of churches and communities,” he said. “That’s something our people have understood only all too well, and they’ve been very generous.”
“Ultimately, I have hope — great hope — that American Catholics will continue to help us live out the Gospel and continue with their generosity,” he said.
CNEWA was founded by Pope Pius XI in 1926. Its humanitarian and outreach efforts include scholarships for priests and funds for repairing churches as well as more diverse initiatives including poultry farms for religious sisters in Eritrea and youth ministry programs in Israel.
La Civita said the Church will remain active at the forefront of the present crisis.
“The Church doesn’t shut down when there are pandemics, and it doesn’t move out when there is no money,” he said.
“The Church remains, and it remains present, as do the people it serves. And so they’re going to reach out to us,” he said.