Let’s try a thought experiment: A public school board votes for a policy that bans a certain group of people — say, teachers who are LGBTQ+ — from teaching in its school system because, it fears, one or more of those teachers might make students feel uncomfortable.
Why Christianity is a threat to our technocratic elites.
Missouri Senator Josh Hawley last week persistently questioned Attorney General Merrick Garland about the FBI’s over-reaction last September in its heavily armed arrest of pro-life Catholic Mark Houck at his home––for an alleged assault that local law enforcement had already declined to prosecute. Houck was tried, and a jury acquitted him in just an hour.
The Dobbs decision brought to the surface the anti-Catholicism of woke progressives.
Back in 2017, when Amy Coney Barrett was undergoing confirmation hearings for her nomination to the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals, Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein expressed concern about Judge Barrett’s devotion to her Catholic faith. “The dogma lives loudly within you,” Feinstein said. Two years later, Brian Buescher, a nominee to the federal bench in Ohio, faced criticism from Democratic Sens. Kamala Harris and Mazie Hirono for his membership in the Knights of Columbus. Then, an article in the Atlantic magazine argued that the Catholic rosary symbolized religious radicalism and had become a “weapon” for those dangerous white Christian nationalists. The author of the article, Daniel Panneton, wrote that “rosary beads have been woven into a conspiratorial politics and absolutist gun culture.” Most recently, a former FBI special agent produced an internal memo from the FBI’s Richmond office that characterized as a domestic threat “Radical Traditionalist Catholic ideology.” The memo even created a new acronym for this threat group — RTC (Radical Traditional Catholics). To paraphrase Martin Niemoller, they are coming for traditional Catholics.
In 2022, 5,621 Christian around the world were “killed for faith related reasons.” Another 4,542 Christians were illegally detained or arrested, and 2,110 churches were attacked, many destroyed. Overall, the global persecution of Christians remains higher than ever, with 360 million believers suffering high levels of discrimination and violence.
These are among some of the findings of the World Watch List 2023, recently published by the international humanitarian organization, Open Doors. Each year, the World Watch List ranks the top 50 nations where Christians are most persecuted for their faith by using data from approximately 4,000 field workers and external experts to analyze the persecution worldwide.
“Blessed are they who are persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven,” reads Christ’s eighth beatitude in the Gospel of Matthew. It is perhaps the beatitude most often viewed as a remnant of the ancient world among modern Americans, as persecution of the faithful has been remarkably absent in this country. Every now and then, though, a news story reminds us Christ’s proclamation is just as important as ever.
In the wake of a church-burning on New Year’s Eve in rural Alberta, The Epoch Times followed up with police on the status of investigations into the fire as well as the torching of multiple churches in Canada in the summer of 2021.
The fire investigator has determined that arson was the cause of a blaze that destroyed St. Joseph Lutheran Church near the village of Hay Lakes, just north of Camrose and about 50 kilometres southeast of Edmonton, late on Dec. 31, burning it to the ground.
Camrose RCMP Cpl. Kevin Krebs says plain-clothes officers are doing interviews and collecting witness statements.
In the liturgical calendar, Christmas Day is immediately followed by the feast of St. Stephen, the very first martyr of the church. Two days after that is the feast of the Holy Innocents, honoring those children under the age of 2 who were murdered by the brutal tyrant Herod. As many wiser than I have observed, our celebration of the birth of the Christ Child is marred by man’s sinful desire to stamp him out, as well as those associated with him.
They’re picking up the pieces from disproportionate restrictions.
Americans are increasingly coming to the conclusion that Democrats irreversibly damaged the nation through their pandemic restrictions.
Nowhere is this more true than in the decline of American churches, which were gutted by onerous rules and outright bans that stretched for months on end. In many instances, such restrictions remained in place much longer than those on shopping malls and movie productions, driving questions about why Democrats were incommensurately tough on churches.
IN THE Middle Ages there were no nation states. Instead, there were competing and interlocked feudal power blocs ruled by upper classes identifying with each other. The elite spoke the same language, had the same interests, shared the same culture. The peasants and serfs they ruled were of no account.
The head of a conservative Christian group in Virginia is speaking out after members of her organization were turned away from a restaurant based solely on their religious views.
Victoria Cobb, president of the non-profit Christian lobbying organization Family Foundation of Virginia, told Fox News Digital that several members of her group were scheduled to hold a private event at a side room at Metzger Bar and Butchery in Richmond, Virginia when they received a call an hour and a half before the reservation saying their reservation had been canceled.
A statement by the U.K.’s main prosecution service says it is “no longer appropriate” to read parts of the Bible aloud in public. Christian groups have called the statement “ill-judged” and “concerning”.
h/t NJ
Western authorities appear committed to discriminating against Christian asylum seekers, while welcoming Muslims ones.
Most recently, Germany — which has taken in millions of refugees from the Muslim world, including many, non-vetted, from Afghanistan — denied refuge to an Iranian convert to Christianity, known by the initials “H.H.,” whose brother-in-law had been imprisoned, tortured and killed after converting in their native Iran. According to a report from August 2
The Canadian Catholic church and its members, many of whom are Indigenous or immigrants, were last year buffeted by a horrendous 260 per cent spike in hate crimes.
Catholics were subject to a far higher escalation in police-reported hate incidents than any other religious or racial group, according to a Statistics Canada study.
The Atlantic’s piece on the Rosary as an extremist symbol is the funniest thing I’ve read in years
I’m one of the many, many millions who repeatedly reread P.G. Wodehouse. His humour is a balm and his writing a miracle of tone and diction. I also, since first tasting him in high school — The Marine Excursion of the Knights of Pythias, later changed to The Sinking of the Mariposa Belle was the story — revisit Stephen Leacock.
Politicians have found a new straw man: climate change. There are certainly many things we can gradually do not to pollute or wreck our planet, but blaming it for the pervasive slaughter of Christians by Muslims in northern Africa is not one of them. It seems, sadly, that what drives the persecution of Christians there, and elsewhere, is doctrine, not climate change.
On June 5, 2022, Muslims massacred 50 Christians inside a Nigerian church on Pentecost Sunday (one of many examples of Nigerian Christians massacred while worshipping in their churches).
Two days later, Ireland’s President Michael Higgins issued a statement linking the Nigerian church massacre to — climate change. “The neglect of food security issues in Africa, for so long has brought us to a point of crisis that is now having internal and regional effects based on struggles, ways of life themselves,” he wrote, implying that food shortages caused by the climate are what cause murder.
