Notes: Some previously-unpublished items from 2011 (part 1 of 2)

In no particular order:

1. "HUMANITAS MAGAZINE TO HAVE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE EDITION"

"HUMANITAS MAGAZINE TO HAVE ENGLISH-LANGUAGE EDITION"
VIS 20111129 (280)
http://www.news.va/en/news/humanitas-magazine-to-have-english-language-editio

This is the linked U.R.L. for Humanitas Review's website:

http://www.humanitas.cl/

Of particular interest in the first issue of Humanitas Review is the posthumous contribution on pp. 27-41 by His late Eminence Avery Robert, Cardinal Dulles S.J. on Bl. John Paul II. and Dignitatis humanæ (though you might be familiar with the content of that contribution already, since that contribution is based, according to footnote 21, on a lecture given at Oxford University under the sponsorship of the Becket Fund on October 26, 2000).

Labels: Church and State, Confessional State, Dignitatis Humanæ, John Paul II. Wojtyla, religious liberty

2. Some points of interest from a recent AD2000 article on Russia:

[…] In early July this year, the Russian Orthodox Church declared it was against becoming the state religion: "The Moscow Patriarchate's position on what relations between the state and the Church should be is invariable. We do not want the Church to become part of the state apparatus, state machinery, to assume secular functions," Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the head of the Synodal Department for Church and Society Relations, said.

He was commenting on a poll conducted by the Sreda Agency along with the Public Opinion foundation, of 1,500 people across 44 Russian regions, 100 towns and villages. According to the poll, 30% of Russians want Orthodoxy to become the state religion, 48% are against it and 23% did not have an opinion.

[…] According to Russia's census, the country's population plummeted by more than 12 million between 1992 and 2008, and stands at around 143 million today. Legalised abortion has accounted for a significant part of that drop, with some 1.5 million abortions reported in the country in 2007 - nearly the same as the number of children born in that year. Unofficial estimates indicate that there are nearly four million abortions per year in Russia yet only 1.7 million live births. The UN has predicted that by 2050 the Russian population will have dipped to 116 million. Russia's population will not be able to support its elderly citizens and the nation faces an acute worker shortage.

[…] WCF [World Congress of Families] Managing Director, Larry Jacobs, noted the Summit was coming at a crucial time. "It's not Russia alone that's experiencing demographic winter," Jacobs observed. "Worldwide, birthrates have declined by more than 50% since the late 1960s. By the year 2050, there will be 248 million fewer children under five years of age in the world than there are today. This birth dearth will be one of the greatest challenges confronting humanity in the 21st century," he said.

[…] A member of the Duma (Russia's parliament) Viktor Zvagelsky, said ads for abortion had made "young girls believe they won't have any problems interrupting a pregnancy." Another Duma member, Valery Draganov, said the "number of abortions in our country reaches six to eight million a year. Every minute, two abortions are carried out in Russia. Due to botched abortions, 20 percent of families lose the ability to become parents. One in every five pregnant women who dies, dies as a result of abortion. These are catastrophic statistics."

[…] Russian lawmakers have now passed a bill requiring all abortion advertisements to carry health warnings. Under this law, passed by the the Duma in early July, ten percent of the space used in abortion ads must carry a list of possible negative consequences for women, including infertility. The bill also stipulates that mothers who don't want to keep their babies will be able to leave their newborn children anonymously in special adoption centres.

Russia's upper house of parliament, the Federation Council, followed the Duma in approving the measure and President Dmitry Medvedev signed the legislation into law in mid-July.

[…] One of Russia's most visible pro-life leaders, is Svetlana Medvedeva, wife of Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev. At a "Sanctity of Motherhood" forum last year Mrs Medvedeva spoke about the "rights of a child to life," and about the "general lack of support" that usually drove women to "artificial termination of pregnancy."

[…] In a recent speech, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin pledged to raise the nation's birthrate by up to 30% in just three years. Putin's plan calls for spending the equivalent of $53 billion to encourage Russian families to have more children. But Larry Jacobs says that more than cash incentives and government benefits will be needed to raise Russia's well below replacement birth rate. Family & Demography Foundation, which represents the World Congress of Families in Russia, and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) has announced the launch of its latest project: The Life-Family Medical Centers Network. These will be opened in all of the major cities in Russia and the CIS.
[My square-bracketed interpolations, everything else as in the original,
"Glimpses of a new dawn in Russia", by Babette Francis, from the September 2011 issue of AD2000, downloaded from the AD2000 website:
http://www.ad2000.com.au/articles/2011/sep2011p8_3606.html]

Labels: abortion, Church and State, Confessional State, demography, R.O.C., Russia, Vladimir Putin

3. Fr. Harrison on God's creation of Eve

"Old or young earth?", a letter by The Rev. Fr. Brian Harrison O.S., from the October 2011 issue of AD2000, available on-line here:
http://www.ad2000.com.au/articles/2011/oct2011p14_3634.html

"First Parents", a letter by The Rev. Fr. Brian Harrison O.S., from the November 2011 issue of AD2000, available on-line here:
http://www.ad2000.com.au/articles/2011/nov2011p13_3657.html

"DID WOMAN EVOLVE FROM THE BEASTS?[:] A DEFENCE OF TRADITIONAL CATHOLIC DOCTRINE - PART I", by The Rev. Fr. Brian Harrison O.S., in Living Tradtion, No. 97, January 2002
http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt97.html

"DID WOMAN EVOLVE FROM THE BEASTS?[:] A DEFENCE OF TRADITIONAL CATHOLIC DOCTRINE - PART II", by The Rev. Fr. Brian Harrison O.S., in Living Tradtion, No. 98, March 2002
http://www.rtforum.org/lt/lt98.html

I was glad to see that there was someone else who agreed with me that "we must necessarily admit the special creation of … Eve" (source). For convenience, here are Fr. Harrison's sources, taken from those two letters to AD2000, for his contention:

• the Profession of Faith of Pope Pelagius I., DS 443, Dz. 228a, available here:
  http://www.catecheticsonline.com/SourcesofDogma3.php

• the Profession of Faith of The Ecumenical Council of Vienne, DS 901, Dz. 480, available here:
  http://www.catecheticsonline.com/SourcesofDogma5.php

• the Encyclical Letter Arcanum, Leo XIII., A.D. 1880, available in English here:
  http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/leo_xiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_l-xiii_enc_10021880_arcanum_en.html
  and in the original Latin, from the Acta Sanctae Sedis, 12, 1879-1880, p. 386, available here:
  http://www.vatican.va/archive/ass/documents/ASS%2012%20[1879]%20-%20ocr.pdf

• the Response of the Biblical Commission, June 30, 1909, to Question III, Dz. 2123, available here:
  http://www.catecheticsonline.com/SourcesofDogma22.php

• I Cor. 11:8, 12

Labels: Adam (Patriarch), Creation, theology

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of St. Anthony, Abbot, A.D. 2012