Nuclear bombs are immoral
Addressing “the first meeting of states parties to the treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons”, Pope Francis said: “Nuclear weapons are costly and dangerous. They represent a ‘risk multiplier’ that provides only an illusion of peace. The use of nuclear weapons, and their mere possession, is immoral. Trying to defend and ensure stability and peace through a false sense of security and a ‘balance of terror’, sustained by a mentality of fear and mistrust, inevitably ends up poisoning relationships between peoples and obstructing any possible form of real dialogue.”
On clerical garb
In an article in La Croix titled “High fashion and the Catholic Clergy”, Christoph Henning wrote: “In a laicised and secularised society, ‘the young generation can express the desire for identity through a lost fantasy, the symbol of reviving the past,’ explains Fra Ambrosio [Dominican friar Alberto Fabio Ambrosio]. But not in the archdiocese of Toulouse. ‘Wearing the cassock is not permitted in the seminary, it is the law in force,’ Archbishop Guy de Kerimel recently told his candidates for the priesthood. It seems priests who wear a simple black or gray shirt with a white tab collar are more of the ‘Pope Francis trend’ than those who dress in the more formal gilet with broad full collars.”
Likely dead not enough
The Anscombe Bioethics Centre, a Catholic centre, reacted to the decision of the High Court in UK allowing doctors to withdraw ventilation from a brain-damaged boy who was ‘very likely’ dead. “It seems extraordinary that questions of life and death should be matters of a balance of probability rather than determination beyond reasonable doubt. …No one would suggest burying someone who was ‘more likely than not’ to be dead.”
(Compiled by Fr Joe Borg)