In recent weeks, slanderous allegations have been made against Saint John Paul II.
On Divine Mercy Sunday, a day established by John Paul II, Pope Francis defended his predecessor saying, “Certain of interpreting the feelings of the faithful throughout the world, I direct a grateful thought to the memory of Saint John Paul II, the object of offensive and unfounded inferences these past few days.”
Read the full story
A letter Friday from Rep. Chris Smith (R-NJ) to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin condemned the Biden administration’s decision to end the contract for provision of pastoral care by a community of Franciscan clergy to service members and veterans at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center.
“I write today with grave concerns regarding the provision of Religious Services at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, specifically Catholic pastoral care, and request you immediately provide access for Catholic priests who seek to offer pastoral care to service members and Veterans who are in the hospital,” Smith wrote, noting the cease-and-desist letter issued by the medical center to the Franciscans at Holy Name College.
Read the full story
Minneapolis has become the first major city in the United States to allow the Muslim call to prayer to be broadcast over speakers five times per day, year-round, including in the early mornings and late evenings.
The Minneapolis City Council voted unanimously Thursday – during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan – to approve an amendment to the city’s noise ordinance that would allow the “adhan” – “Allahu akbar,” or “God is great,” call to prayer to be sounded every day, year-round, five times daily.
Read the full story
Spring is filled with myriad holy days for the Catholic Church. St. Patrick’s and St. Joseph’s feast days are widely celebrated, and the Solemnity of the Annunciation on March 25 gives another cause for celebration during the somber season of Lent. Soon after, Lent leads to Palm Sunday, which quickly gives way to the Paschal Triduum, the holiest days of the year. Then, at last, the joy of the Easter season begins.
Read the full story
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) signed into law Thursday night a bill that bans abortions in his state after six weeks, the stage of pregnancy when a fetal heartbeat is generally detected.
The new law also provides $25 million in funds for pro-life pregnancy centers throughout the state, to assist women during and after pregnancy.
Read the full story
The Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) is recommending no jail time and three years of probation for a transgender activist who admitted to vandalizing a Catholic church with profane graffiti, desecrating a statue of the Virgin Mary, and assaulting a church worker, according to a Fox News Digital report.
A plea agreement that was reportedly viewed by Fox News Digital shows the Biden DOJ says a man who uses the name Maeve Nota, 31, should receive zero jail time, despite admitting to vandalizing St. Louise Catholic Church in Bellevue, Washington.
Read the full story
A leading national Catholic advocacy organization says it is prepared to file a lawsuit against the FBI for failing to comply with its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that seeks communications information related to a leaked document that revealed the bureau was targeting so-called “radical traditional Catholics.”
“On March 6th we filed a freedom of information act request with the FBI in Richmond, VA, asking for communications regarding the targeting of traditional Catholics,” stated CatholicVote in a tweet Tuesday. “Norms require the agency to respond within 20 business days, with an additional 10 for ‘unusual circumstances.’ To date we have not received any response.”
Read the full story
Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) filed a federal lawsuit last week against the Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS) on behalf of a woman whose application to adopt siblings from foster care was denied because her Christian faith beliefs do not allow her to agree to support the “sexual orientation, gender identity, [and] gender expression” of children placed in her home.
“Oregon’s policy amounts to an ideological litmus test: people who hold secular or ‘progressive’ views on sexual orientation and gender identity are eligible to participate in child welfare programs, while people of faith with religiously informed views are disqualified because they don’t agree with the state’s orthodoxy,” said ADF Senior Counsel Jonathan Scruggs, who runs the ADF Center for Conscience Initiatives.
Read the full story
“They are truly family,” Katherine Warnock says of the cast members of “The Chosen.”
The cast of the popular streaming series “The Chosen” is back on set to film Season Four, and “what you see on screen is truly authentic behind the camera as well,” says Warnock, vice president of original content for “The Chosen.” Filming of the new season kicked off at the end of March.
Read the full story
A persecuted Chinese Christian church has been freed from Thai prison and is bound for Texas, human rights advocates told the Daily Caller News Foundation on Friday.
Over 60 members of the Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church, also known as the Mayflower Church, is scheduled to arrive at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport late Friday evening, ending the church’s three year-long quest for asylum after fleeing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) persecution in 2019, Pastor Bob Fu, founder of ChinaAid, told the DCNF. Despite applying for asylum in Thailand in August, the members of the Mayflower Church were arrested last week for overstaying their visas, prompting international concern that the church might be deported back to the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and face persecution.
Read the full story
A lot of Easter traditions – including hot cross buns and lamb on Sunday – stem from medieval Christian or even earlier pagan beliefs. The chocolate Easter egg, however, is a more modern twist on tradition.
Chicken eggs have been eaten at Easter for centuries. Eggs have long symbolised rebirth and renewal, making them perfect to commemorate the story of Jesus’ resurrection as well as the arrival of spring.
Read the full story
Will the churches be full this Easter?
Or did the COVID-19 pandemic, and the long time of closed churches, usher in a new era?
Read the full story
Hillsdale College’s Blake Center for Faith and Freedom in Somers, Connecticut, has received clearance from the town’s zoning commission to expand its offering of events and increase the number of people who attend them.
The executive director of the Blake Center, which is a replica of Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, spoke with The Star News Network about the zoning commission’s unanimous approval of a modified special-use permit that will allow Hillsdale to increase the number of allowed guests at the center’s seminars and other events to 75.
Read the full story
Both the Tennessee Senate and House have now passed the state’s Human Life Protection Act (HLPA), legislation that bans abortion, with only one change – an exception for saving the life of the mother – one that the pro-life community says will continue to protect the right to life of all unborn children in the state.
Gov. Bill Lee (R) is expected to sign the legislation.
Read the full story
For the Catholic Church and many other Christian denominations, the Sunday before Easter marks the beginning of the most important week of the year – “Holy Week,” when Christians reflect on central mysteries of their faith: Christ’s Last Supper, crucifixion and resurrection from the dead.
Palm Sunday commemorates the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem shortly before the Jewish holiday of Passover. According to the Christian Gospels, people lined the streets to greet him, waving palm branches and shouting words of praise.
Read the full story
America is a diverse country. In most cities, you can find people from nearly every ethnic or racial background imaginable. This is becoming the case in rural areas as well. But America is host to a considerable amount of religious diversity as well. And while race relations are often the subject of considerable discussion, understanding interreligious relations is a necessary part of understanding the country as a whole.
Read the full story
Pastor Brian Dulli sent a clear message to the congregants of his suburban Madison St. Patrick’s Catholic Church: Voting for a Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate who stands for the killing of the unborn is perilous to your faith and soul.
Now, a leftwing group is threatening to get President Joe Biden’s IRS involved and go after the Diocese of Madison for “electioneering.”
Read the full story
A Presbyterian minister condemned the Biden administration’s refusal to denounce the Nashville school shooting as a “religious hate crime against Christians.”
Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Christian Defense Coalition, said in a statement Thursday that President Joe Biden and his administration’s failure to declare the shooting at the Covenant Christian school a hate crime against Christians “is deeply troubling and concerning.”
Read the full story
The Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford, Connecticut, issued a statement Tuesday about its ongoing investigation into a possible Eucharistic miracle that was reported at St. Thomas Church in Thomaston earlier in March.
Rev. Joseph Crowley, pastor of St. Thomas, announced on March 5 after the distribution of Holy Communion that a lay eucharistic minister had witnessed a possible miracle when the vessel holding the hosts showed more hosts had appeared.
Read the full story
The president of the Catholic League said Tuesday that the Nashville school shooting “needs to be investigated as a hate crime against Christians” based on the report by the police chief that the transgender shooter held “some resentment for having to go to that school.”
“The shooter, Audrey Hale, is a female who misidentified herself as a male,” wrote Bill Donohue, who heads the Catholic civil rights organization. “Her resentment against The Covenant School, a Christian school, is important given that Christianity teaches we are either male or female.”
Read the full story
Pro-life Connecticut activists gathered Wednesday in Hartford at the Capitol building for the second annual March for Life to celebrate life from conception to natural death and to demonstrate against more abortions that could come if two proposals are approved.
Despite the fact that Connecticut already has extremely liberal abortion laws, House Joint Resolution No. 8, introduced by State Rep. Keith Denning (D-Wilton), is a proposal for a constitutional amendment to protect the right to an abortion. The resolution would enshrine abortion in the state Constitution.
Read the full story
Thousands of Connecticut residents attended the second annual March for Life Wednesday where they heard state Rep. Treneé McGee (D-West Haven) assert she is not an “anomaly,” since “one in three Democrats are pro-life and there are many black pro-life women across the world.”
McGee, who also addressed the tens of thousands of pro-life activists at the national March for Life in Washington, D.C. in January, urged her fellow Connecticut residents at the state Capitol in Hartford to help “create a culture of life.”
Read the full story
The University of Notre Dame is hosting a “Queer Holiness” event next week to discuss “Experiential Christian Anthropology,” according to the event page.
On March 23, the university’s John J. Reilly Center is hosting a “Queer Holiness” event with Rev. Dr. Charlie Bell to address the church’s “hostile questions” regarding the LGBTQ community. Bell, a gay deacon in the Church of England and a Cambridge fellow, is also the author of the book “Queer Holiness,” which claims to “find a better way to do theology – not about, but with and of LGBTQI people.”
Read the full story
Gender ideology preys upon the young, convincing girls and boys that they were “born in the wrong body” and rushing them onto experimental drugs, hormones, and surgeries that will leave them stunted, scarred, and infertile. Yet the ostensible Catholic who currently occupies the Oval Office not only supports this horror but had the gall to condemn those who would protect children from it as “sinful” and “cruel.”
Read the full story
The Hendersonville Police Department reported Thursday that a Connecticut man had been taken into custody by the Connecticut State Police as the suspect for threats made against the Hendersonville Public Library, where its director Allan Morales was recently fired.
Read the full story
When Constantinople finally fell to the Ottomans on Tuesday, May 29, 1453, the Byzantine Empire and its capital had survived for 1,000 years beyond the fall of the Western Empire at Rome.
Always outnumbered in a sea of enemies, the Byzantines’ survival had depended on its realist diplomacy of dividing its enemies, avoiding military quagmires, and ensuring constant deterrence.
Read the full story
Washington Elementary School District No. 6 (WESD) in Glendale terminated the contract of Arizona Christian University (ACU) to provide student teachers last month, despite an ongoing teacher shortage, citing the religious tenets of the university as the reason. In response, The Alliance Defending Freedom filed a lawsuit on behalf of the ACU on March 9, demanding multiple types of damages, including punitive.
The suit alleges a violation of the Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment. It asserts that “Arizona Christian and its students do not share religious messages and beliefs within its student teacher programs with local public Schools.”
Read the full story
Pope Francis says the Catholic Church’s celibacy decree for unmarried men ordained as priests is a “temporary prescription” that could be reconsidered.
“In the Western Church, celibacy is a temporary prescription,” Francis told the Argentinian outlet Infobae late last week, as translated. “I do not know if it is settled in one way or another.”
Read the full story
Bills in the states of Vermont, Delaware, and Washington would include in mandatory reporting laws information about child sexual abuse a priest learns during the Sacrament of Reconciliation, a move the Catholic League states lacks sound reasoning.
Last week Catholic League President Bill Donohue warned the “seal of confession” is “under fire” in Vermont, noting the Catholic civil rights organization is once again “doing battle with lawmakers who want to violate” the priest-penitent privilege, mostly in legislation concerning the sexual abuse of minors.
Read the full story
A Catholic nonprofit paid $4 million to collect dating app data in an effort to determine if priests are adhering to their commitment to celibacy, according to a report from the Washington Post.
Catholic Laity and Clergy for Renewal (CLCR) is a Colorado nonprofit that seeks to help the clergy by providing “evidence-based resources,” “support quality formation practices” and “identify weaknesses,” according to the organization’s website. CLCR reportedly spent $4 million to gain access to data from multiple dating apps, including Grindr, Scruff and OKCupid, and determine whether members of the Catholic priesthood were using the apps, according to the Post.
Read the full story
Over 100 concerned parents, educators, and others showed up at a school board meeting of Washington Elementary School District No. 6 (WESD) in Glendale to speak Thursday night, most of them upset that the school board unanimously decided that the district would no longer hire student teachers from Arizona Christian University (ACU). Newly elected School Board Member Tamillia Valenzuela, who describes herself as “witchy AF” and “queer AF,” led the effort, stating the university’s “biblically-informed” values made her feel unsafe.
Read the full story
Arizona Christian University (ACU), represented by Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), filed a lawsuit against the Washington Elementary School District (WESD) Thursday, alleging the district discriminated against the school based on its religious beliefs.
“By discriminating against Arizona Christian University and denying it an opportunity to participate in the student teacher program because of its religious status and beliefs, the school district is in blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution, not to mention state law that protects ACU’s religious freedom,” said ADF Senior Counsel David Cortman, vice president of U.S. litigation. “Washington Elementary School District officials are causing irreparable harm to ACU every day they force it to choose between its religious beliefs and partnering with the area’s public schools.”
Read the full story
When I moved to Norway from the U.S. in 1999, one of the new pieces of information that most surprised me had to do with its national holidays.
In the U.S., all but one of our 11 federal holidays could be described as secular or civic commemorations: New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Jr. Day, Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day, Labor Day, Columbus Day, Veterans’ Day, and Thanksgiving. Even though America is probably the most churchgoing country in the developed world, only one of our federal holidays, Christmas, is a religious festival.
Read the full story
It never stops getting worse, does it? Just when you think the progressive Left has torpedoed our culture and country to rock bottom, a new hitherto-inconceivable outrage explodes.
Until the Trump years, the law-abiding universally loved the FBI. They protected our country and us, we thought. They investigated domestic threats to America, we thought. They were politically nonpartisan, like the military, we thought. Respect for them was so universal that ABC had a show titled The F.B.I., starring Efrem Zimbalist Jr., which depicted FBI heroism week after week.
Read the full story
A ballot measure that would amend the Ohio state Constitution to remove current health and safety protections for women and girls seeking abortion and parental consent requirements for minors seeking the procedure has advanced following certification by the state attorney general’s office.
Pro-life organizations are rallying to oppose the “The Right to Reproductive Freedom With Protections for Health and Safety” initiative that they say will endanger the lives of women and girls seeking abortions.
Read the full story
Black History Month has drawn to a close, and former NFL player and author Ben Watson acknowledged its end by highlighting that the greatest injustice in black history still continues in the hundreds of thousands of black babies aborted each year.
Read the full story
Biden Attorney General Merrick Garland is expected to face tough questions from Republican senators Wednesday regarding what many in the nation say has been the purposeful weaponization of the Department of Justice against parents of schoolchildren, Catholics who live their faith in the public square, and activists who fight for the vulnerable unborn.
Read the full story
Tennessee Right to Life is calling upon state lawmakers to vote against legislation that would rewrite the Human Life Protection Act by introducing “exceptions” which, the group says, would make the law “unenforceable.”
Senate Bill 745/House Bill 883 is slated to be heard in the state Senate Judiciary Committee Tuesday, February 28. Its companion bill in the state House will be heard in that chamber’s Health Committee Wednesday, March 1.
Read the full story
A California Christian physical education teacher was allegedly fired for refusing to lie to parents about their children’s gender identities at school and reject having males in female locker rooms – both policies that violate her faith beliefs, Fox News Digital reported Wednesday.
Jessica Tapias apparently shared with Fox News Digital the notice she received from the office of Jurupa Unified School District Superintendent Trenton Hansen.
Read the full story
The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Richmond Division has reportedly rescinded a leaked memo that cited the discredited radical Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) warning that “white supremacy” has “found a home” in traditionalist Catholics.
Former FBI special agent Kyle Seraphin revealed Wednesday at UnCoverdc.com that the federal agency’s Richmond Division released a “finished intelligence product dated January 23, 2023” that cited the disgraced leftist SPLC to warn Virginians about Racially or Ethnically Motivated Violent Extremists” (RMVE) and “Radical-Traditionalist Catholics.”
Read the full story
Governor Bill Lee (R-TN) announced Monday during his State of the State address he would propose boosting support for women in unplanned pregnancies through various programs, including an expansion in funding for crisis pregnancy care centers to $100 million, widening Medicaid eligibility for pregnant women and parents, and granting additional paid family leave time for state employees.
Tennessee’s “trigger” law that bans abortion, titled the Human Life Protection Act, took effect August 25, two months after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Read the full story
Parents and parish school officials in East Oakland, California, are desperate for police assistance as scantily-clad young prostitutes solicit sex along the sidewalk of St. Anthony’s K-8 elementary school.
Read the full story
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey led 19 other Republican state attorneys general (AGs) in a warning letter to CVS and Walgreens that asserts federal law forbids using the mail to send or receive drugs that are intended to be used to produce an abortion.
Bailey and the coalition of attorneys general wrote to the two drugstore chains, informing them that their announced plan to use the mail to distribute abortion pills is both unsafe and illegal.
Read the full story
The staff of the Smithsonian’s National Air & Space Museum allegedly ridiculed, swore at, and then kicked out an entire group of Catholic pro-life students and their chaperones for wearing hats that say “Rosary PRO-LIFE,” reports the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which now represents the mother of two of the students.
Read the full story
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz (D) signed legislation Tuesday that has been condemned by the pro-life community as the most extreme abortion measure in the nation, one that creates a “fundamental right” to abortion at any time during pregnancy, and denies parents the right to know if their minor daughter undergoes an abortion.
Walz signed the Protect Reproductive Options (PRO) Act to enshrine in state statute a “fundamental right” to abortion, without any restrictions, and to contraception, sterilization, fertility treatment.
Read the full story
Veteran Catholic pro-life activist Mark Houck described to Steve Bannon Tuesday the scene at his family’s home on September 23, 2022, when over 20 FBI agents and Pennsylvania state troopers banged on his door at 6:45 a.m.
Read the full story
Bishop E.W. Jackson said in a statement released Monday that Al Sharpton, whom Jackson referred to as “one of the most divisive figures in America,” should not be allowed to preach the eulogy for Tyre Nichols who, police charge, was beaten to death by five, now former, Memphis police officers.
“If the facts as we now know them are proved in a court of law, the former police officers deserve life in prison for their callousness and depraved indifference to human life,” Jackson said in a press statement, adding the current situation does not concern a racial issue, but one of “humanity,” which should be a source of unity rather than division.
Read the full story
The co-chair of the Congressional Pro-Life Caucus told thousands of advocates for life on the National Mall in Washington, DC, that the “pro-abortion culture of denial” is a “modern-day flat earth society” that “continues to deny, devalue, and disrespect unborn baby girls and boys and trivialize the harm suffered by women.”
On Friday, Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ) spoke at the 50th annual March for Life – the first since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
Read the full story
Thousands of pro-life Americans and advocates from other nations will gather on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. Friday to celebrate the 50th March for Life, the first since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
The March for Life Education and Defense Fund says the theme for the world’s largest annual human rights demonstration is “Next Steps: Marching into a Post-Roe America,” one that calls pro-life advocates to continue their work in defense of the unborn and their mothers on both the state and federal level, including advocacy for “a minimum federal standard to protect innocent life against radical pro-abortion legislation.”
Read the full story
Nearly all House Democrats opposed a resolution Wednesday condemning the political violence against pro-life pregnancy centers and their supportive allies that occurred in the aftermath of the leak of the U.S. Supreme Court’s draft opinion in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
The House voted, 222-209, to approve the resolution, introduced by Representative Mike Johnson (R-LA) that states since the leak of the draft opinion, “individuals professing anti-life views have targeted, destroyed, or vandalized numerous pro-life facilities, groups, and even churches to further their radical cause.”
Read the full story