Rededicate 250 Puts Christian Revival On Full Display, And Gen Z Came Out In Droves
'We need to search for something'
This Mother’s Day, Meet The Nuns Who Pray For Weary Moms At Midnight
When a viral post mistakenly described midnight prayers as 'motherhood hour,' the flood of responses that followed exposed a need in the hearts of moms everywhere.Why Biden’s targeting of Christians was EVEN WORSE than you thought
A newly released Department of Justice task force report is confirming concerns that religious Americans — particularly Christians — were unfairly targeted by their own government. And Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon has seen it herself.
“We’ve been compiling this stuff for a while now, and I experienced this type of anti-Christian and really anti-religious bias as a lawyer in private practice over the last several years,” Dhillon tells Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck on “The Glenn Beck Program.”
“I’ll just give you one example. Our government, not just the DOJ but, you know, various aspects of the government, viewed people seeking religious accommodations to not have to get the COVID vaccination if they were government employees as not legitimate,” she explains.
“They basically internally labeled all of those accommodation requests illegitimate,” she adds.
The Supreme Court Bostock ruling, Dhillon explains, “basically made it illegitimate for any person employed by the government to have a Christian viewpoint on gay marriage and issues like that, which are very much spiritual and religious in nature.”
“And so, there was just a complete lack of respect for the Christian,” she adds.
Dhillon explains that according to a FACE Act weaponization report, “disparaging remarks were made by DOJ prosecutors in [her] department” regarding “a magistrate judge being a Catholic, keeping people of faith off of juries, and going after and seeking sentences that were more than double for Christian protesters outside abortion clinics than for really domestic terrorists going after pro-life centers in Florida.”
“So these disparities were marked, they were open, they were written down in emails. And thank goodness that we have a president today who is not just dedicated to changing that but to also documenting what happened so that people should feel ashamed to do this to other people of faith in our country because our country is founded on faith,” she continues.
“And specifically,” she adds, “on the Christian faith.”
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ACLU fights archangel Michael statue honoring cops — but court might not normalize 'heckler's veto'
A Massachusetts city in the Greater Boston area commissioned a pair of 10-foot-tall bronze statues heavy with cultural and historical significance to honor police and firefighters outside its new public safety headquarters.
Since the statues also carry religious significance — one depicts the winged archangel Michael stepping on the head of a demon, and the other depicts Florian, a third-century firefighting Roman Christian — the American Civil Liberties Union and a handful of secularizing activist groups joined local thin-skinned critics in suing to block the installation last May.
According to the ACLU, having the two statues as the sole adornments on the building's facade "would undermine religious pluralism in Quincy and violate the Massachusetts Constitution’s long-standing requirement that the government remain neutral in matters of religion."
'Let Quincy pay tribute to its firefighters and police.'
The ensuing legal battle has reached the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, which heard oral arguments on Wednesday in the case Fitzmaurice v. City of Quincy.
The defendants' thesis, as outlined in their opening brief to the court, is that symbolism on government property should not become "illegal simply because some citizens perceive it to have religious meaning."
Some of the court's justices, Democrat-appointee Gabrielle Wolohojian in particular, did not appear to be entirely buying what the attorney for the city from the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty was selling at the outset despite considering his arguments in a city already replete with public art evoking persons, symbols, and themes of religious significance, including multiple statues of Moses.
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The court proved particularly fixated on whether Florian and Michael's special recognition as saints by the Catholic Church was actually an issue in this case and raised as possibly relevant in a lower court's insinuation that the statues' primary champion, Quincy Mayor Thomas Koch, was untrustworthy and had worked clandestinely to get the statues funded and installed.
The court was not, however, overly receptive to the ACLU's arguments in favor of denying Quincy first responders their statues, which have been defended in recent months by a plethora of organizations, including the nation’s largest firefighter and police unions, various faith groups, and esteemed constitutional scholars.
One justice questioned whether:
- such legal concern-mongering constitutes a "heckler's veto" that is here at risk of being normalized;
- the plaintiffs were effectively asking the state's high court to "provide less protection than the Supreme Court on free exercise," or "allow more hostility to religion than the Supreme Court would tolerate"; and
- the statues endorsed a particular religion — an especially dubious claim given Florian's secular, historical significance and the archangel Michael's significance in multiple distinct faiths as well as in popular culture and literature.
Tom Bowes, president of Quincy's Firefighters Local 792, said in a statement, "For generations, Florian’s legacy has inspired the brave men and women who run toward danger when others need help. We hope the court allows Quincy to honor that tradition and the first responders who live it every day."
Joseph Davis, senior counsel at Becket and an attorney for the city, said, "In this country, public art doesn't become off-limits just because it may make some people think about religion. We’re confident the justices will apply that commonsense rule here and let Quincy pay tribute to its firefighters and police."
Eric Rassbach, another attorney at Becket, said in the wake of the hearing on Wednesday that the ACLU's argument largely "relied on the supposedly dead legal standard known as the Lemon test, which SCOTUS abrogated."
"For decades, the unusuable Lemon test produced confusion and split decisions in cases involving religious symbols," continued Rassbach. "That changed in 2019, when SCOTUS ruled 7-2 in [American Legion v. American Humanist Association] that the First Amendment does not require removing a WWI memorial cross and made clear that Lemon no longer applies."
While the Supreme Court rejected the relevance of the test articulated by SCOTUS in its 1971 Lemon v. Kurtzman ruling as a way of guiding the court in identifying Establishment Clause violations, Norfolk Superior Court Judge William Sullivan previously leaned heavily on it in the Quincy case.
"It would be a bizarre move for Massachusetts to revive a test that failed so badly at the federal level, especially since Lemon has no grounding in the Commonwealth’s Constitution," wrote Rassbach. "That document takes a different approach: It recognizes the vital role of religion in public life while guaranteeing equal protection for all religious denominations. That’s a far cry from forcing cities to scrub anything that smacks of the religious from all public property."
The court is expected to deliver its decision sometime this fall.
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Priest breaks hip — now Canada apparently wants him dead
Rev. Lawrence Holland fell in his bathroom on Christmas Day and suffered a hip fracture. While the 79-year-old Catholic priest went to a nearby hospital in search of help, health care workers at the facility apparently had a final solution in mind: state-facilitated suicide.
Since the Canadian federal government under ex-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau legalized medically assisted suicide nationwide in 2016, the so-called Medical Assistance in Dying program has been grossly liberalized.
'The moment you lose hope, the devil comes in.'
Initially, MAID applicants had to be 18 or older and suffering from a "grievous and irremediable medical condition" causing "enduring physical or psychological suffering that is intolerable" to them. Now, persons struggling with anxiety, autism, depression, economic hardship, PTSD, and other survivable issues appear to be fair game.
Next year, persons suffering solely from a mental illness will also be eligible.
MAID — which Canada's Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer boasted in October 2020 would, with expanded access, "result in a net reduction in health care costs for the provincial governments" — is now among the leading causes of death in Canada, accounting for over 5% of all deaths in Canada in 2024.
"It's a false compassion," Rev. Holland told the B.C. Catholic, the Archdiocese of Vancouver's biweekly publication.
The hobbled priest claimed that a doctor and a nurse at Vancouver General Hospital, directly affiliated with the British Columbia Ministry of Health, offered him MAID while he was recovering from his hip fracture, which is hardly a terminal condition. The priest further claimed that both medical professionals knew he is a Catholic priest.
"I think I was very shocked," said Holland. "It is such a sensitive subject."
Rev. Larry Lynn, pro-life chaplain for the Archdiocese of Vancouver, said, "This must surely be among the most appalling examples of Canada’s coercive and insensitive euthanasia regime."
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Although he was left "kind of silent" for a moment when the topic of assisted suicide was first apparently broached, Rev. Holland emphasized to the doctor that he, a Catholic priest, was morally opposed to the practice.
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states that direct euthanasia is "morally unacceptable"; that such actions constitute "a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person and to the respect due to the living God, his Creator; and that "even if death is thought imminent, the ordinary care owed to a sick person cannot be legitimately interrupted."
The Catholic Church has long campaigned against assisted suicide.
The Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops noted in 2023, for instance, that "euthanasia and assisted suicide (MAID) have always been, and will always be, morally unacceptable because they are affronts to human dignity and violations of natural and divine law."
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has similarly and repeatedly condemned the practice, affirming that "we are dealing here with 'a violation of the divine law, an offense against the dignity of the human person, a crime against life, and an attack on humanity.'"
Just last month, Catholic bishops in New York published a guidebook reiterating the church's moral teaching "that this practice is objectively immoral and must be avoided, despite the false veil of compassion with which it is sold." The state was apparently in need of a reminder given its recent adoption of a law legalizing doctor-assisted suicide.
Even when dealing with a patient from a "faith community" that's opposed to MAID, the Canadian Association of MAID Assessors and Providers still recommends that Canadian health care professionals make the pitch for assisted suicide.
After informing his doctor that he was opposed to assisted suicide, Rev. Holland recalled the doctor explaining that he "just wanted to make sure that, if a [terminal] diagnosis came up or not ... I knew the different services I had access to."
Rev. Holland told the B.C. Catholic that weeks later, a nurse also raised the matter of MAID with him.
A spokesman for Vancouver Coastal Health, which runs the hospital, told the B.C. Catholic that "staff may consider bringing up MAID based on their clinical judgment, provided they possess the necessary knowledge and skills to do so."
Staff are also "responsible for answering questions when patients bring up the topic of MAID," added the spokesman.
Rev. Ronald Sequeria, the Catholic chaplain serving at Vancouver General Hospital, suggested there was something demonic about how MAID-pushers prey on suffering patients' despair — especially when suffering can be redemptive.
"The moment you lose hope, the devil comes in, in different personalities, and says, 'Do you want MAID? I don’t want people to suffer,'" said Rev. Sequeira.
"God makes us more pure, more strong, through the suffering when we offer it up," said the chaplain. "So we give hope — help them not to lose hope."
Rev. Holland drove home this point, stressing that enduring pain "can encourage growth."
"It can motivate you, it can open up new worlds, new vistas, new opportunities," added the priest.
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Pope Leo XIV recognizes martyrdom of Christians slaughtered by Spanish leftists
Pope Leo XIV has recognized the martyrdom of scores of Spanish Christians murdered by leftists in the 1930s, setting the stage for their possible canonization.
Spain was ravaged in the first half of the 20th century by a bloody civil war that saw a motley crew of Soviet-backed leftists — a coalition strained by infighting between anarchists and communists, to the great chagrin of George Orwell — pitted against an alliance of conservatives, nationalists, and monarchists who were alternatively reinforced by German and Italian forces.
In the years leading up to the war, the Catholic Church and its supporters in Spain became increasingly popular targets for deadly leftist attacks and political persecution by the Republican government.
That oppression paled, however, in comparison to the anti-Catholic campaign executed during the "Red Terror" — the leftist counterinsurgency described by the late Austrian-American polymath Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn as "an orgy of rape, sadism, and unspeakable obscenities."
According to the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation:
Republican partisans desecrated, burned, and looted churches and shrines all across Spain. Relics and statues were paraded through the streets in mock celebrations; the bodies of saints and clergy were dug up and abused. Priests and religious were hunted and massacred: around 6,800 Catholic clergy, including 13 bishops, were tortured and executed by left-wing forces. Nor were these killings a reaction to clerical abuses. According to historian José Sanchez, "Priests of all types were killed: strict, loose, moral, immoral, libertines and ascetics,” including "some priests who were social activists and had actively opposed the uprisings." Indeed, murder of the local priest became de rigueur for loyal partisans: "Cassock we see, cassock we kill."
On Monday, Pope Leo authorized the Vatican's Dicastery for the Causes of Saints to recognize the martyrdom of Brother Estanislao Ortega García and 48 of his companions from the Montfort Brothers of St. Gabriel along with diocesan priest Emanuele Berenguer Clusella, who were "killed between the months of July and November 1936 in hatred of the faith, in various parts of Catalonia, Spain, in the context of the same persecution."
Vatican News noted that the recognition of the clerics' martyrdom "marks a step forward in the respective causes for canonization."
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InfoVaticana reported that the Archdiocese of Barcelona initially got the ball rolling on these martyrs' beatification decades ago, collecting testimonies and documentation regarding the circumstances of their deaths.
'They are models of consistency with the truth they professed.'
This is hardly the first time that Pope Leo or his predecessors have recognized the heroic faith of Christians murdered by Spanish leftists in the 1930s.
Last year, for instance, Pope Leo recognized as martyrs 109 diocesan priests, one religious sister, and 14 lay Catholics killed during the conflict along with 50 French Catholics who died in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
In 2013, Pope Leo's predecessor, Pope Francis, enraged leftists by announcing the beatification of over 520 martyrs, mainly clergymen, killed for their faith during the Spanish Civil War. This beatification further advanced the cause of their potential recognition by the Catholic Church as saints.
The process for canonization, or official recognition of sainthood, is as follows: First, a candidate who "lived a heroically virtuous life or offered their life" is recognized by the pope as "venerable." The second stage is beatification, which requires a finding of "one miracle acquired through the candidate's intercession." Finally, for canonization, a second miracle is required.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops notes on its website that "all Christians are called to be saints. Saints are persons in heaven (officially canonized or not), who lived heroically virtuous lives, offered their life for others, or were martyred for the faith, and who are worthy of imitation."
In 2007, Pope Benedict XVI beatified 498 martyrs "who poured out their blood for the faith during the religious persecution in Spain in 1934, 1936 and 1937" and whose ages ranged from 16 to 78.
In 2001, Pope John Paul II beatified 233 martyrs killed during the Spanish Civil War, including Maria Teresa Ferragud, an 83-year-old woman who was savagely murdered on the feast of Christ the King in 1936 along with her four daughters, all of whom were nuns.
"The Church wishes to recognize these men and women as examples of courage and constancy in faith, helped by God’s grace," Pope John Paul II, who was canonized in 2014, said at the time. "For us they are models of consistency with the truth they professed, while at the same time they honor the noble Spanish people and the Church."
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Questions swirl after IDF claims to have replaced crucifix its soldier destroyed
The Israel Defense Forces may have more explaining to do after one of its soldiers destroyed a crucifix with a sledgehammer in Debel, Lebanon, as more than half a dozen others looked on.
While the IDF tried to resolve the incident with a series of social media posts, more details have emerged in the aftermath of this story, raising more questions about the IDF's account.
'Are they playing us?'
Following the incident, the IDF announced that both the soldier who filmed the incident and the soldier who destroyed the crucifix would be jailed for 30 days, and the onlookers would be questioned. The IDF also posted a still photo of the supposed replacement crucifix that it claimed to have helped provide.
However, a conflicting version of events has emerged.
RELATED: IDF soldier caught smashing Jesus statue with sledgehammer — officials and critics react
Photos posted to the X account called Hillbilly Catholic on Wednesday afternoon went viral, and the messages accompanying the photos claimed that the Italian forces of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon had replaced the crucifix.
Among those pictured in the photos are several soldiers with Italian flags on their uniforms that seem to match that of U.N. personnel, a few priests, and what appears to be the apostolic nuncio to Lebanon, Bishop Paolo Borgia.
In another post, Hillbilly Catholic included a screenshot of the IDF's post with the crucifix it claimed "replaced" the one its soldiers had destroyed. The crucifixes in the IDF post and the Hillbilly Catholic posts differ in shape, color, detail, and style.
"Are they playing us?" Hillbilly Catholic asked.
The photographs posted by Hillbilly Catholic were part of a larger set of photos and video from what appears to be a local Debel account on Facebook called Debel Alerts.
On Tuesday, Debel Alerts made a post claiming an Italian priest named Father Claudio was coordinating with UNIFIL Commander General Diodato Abagnara to replace the crucifix in its original spot. The post added that Father Claudio revealed that "a gesture of support" was on its way from UNIFIL and expected to arrive within 48 hours.
There is also a video on the Debel Alerts' timeline of the new crucifix statue being transferred.
On Wednesday, Debel Alerts posted several photos of the installation of the new crucifix with the help of UNIFIL. The photos show soldiers and priests standing side by side in front of the newly installed crucifix statue.
The new crucifix also appears to have been placed in the exact spot where the old one was destroyed, a comparison of the surroundings revealed.
An official account called Debel Municipality posted more photos confirming Bishop Paolo Borgia's presence during the procession and installation of the new crucifix.
However, this account also revealed something unexpected.
Some online users scoffed at the IDF's post of the new crucifix, claiming that the crucifix looked like a small wall crucifix or that the photo was manipulated.
Yet Debel Municipality posted a photo of what appears to be that crucifix during the procession. A man can be seen standing next to some priests and behind some servers while holding the much smaller crucifix that appeared in the IDF's post.
While this photo seems to debunk the claims that the IDF's post was fake or manipulated, other questions remain.
First, neither Debel Alerts nor Debel Municipality make any mention of the IDF's alleged efforts to help replace the crucifix, despite the IDF's claim that "Northern Command worked to coordinate the replacement of the statue from the moment it received the report of the incident."
Similarly, the IDF did not make any mention of UNIFIL's role nor Bishop Paolo Borgia's presence in the town this week, despite their clear roles in the project.
Further, the IDF's "replacement" is not the actual replacement. The crucifix that UNIFIL apparently provided was placed in the same place as the old one and has a similar size and style, while the IDF one, though apparently real, is significantly smaller and not installed in the same place.
Finally, the IDF has not posted any follow-up with a photo of the other crucifix that UNIFIL helped replace, suggesting that the other, smaller crucifix is the only "replacement" they are claiming to have helped with. It is not clear whether the IDF actually provided the smaller crucifix to the community, despite its claim.
Blaze News contacted the IDF, UNIFIL, Debel Municipality, and the Nunciature of Lebanon via the Vatican Press Office but did not immediately receive a response.
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SCOTUS agrees to hear arguments in Colorado religious freedom case
The Supreme Court has agreed to weigh in on whether religious institutions must set aside their core beliefs in order to participate in a state-funded program.
The St. Mary Catholic Parish v. Roy case, broadly speaking, is a challenge to the Archdiocese of Denver's requirement that families and staff support Catholic beliefs. The state takes issue with this requirement when considering whether to allow Catholic schools in the archdiocese to participate in the Universal Preschool Program.
'Colorado promised free preschool for all, then slammed the door on families who chose a religious education for their children. After three losses in religious freedom cases at the Supreme Court, Colorado should know better.'
The archdiocese requires staff and families to sign statements to "affirm that they will support the teachings of the Catholic Church" and that "all Catholic school families must understand and display a positive and supportive attitude toward the Catholic Church," according to Fox News.
Colorado officials, however, argue that these requirements are not inclusive of all children.
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"All participating providers — whether religious or secular — must ensure that children have equal opportunity to enroll in and receive preschool services regardless of those children’s (or their families’) religious affiliation, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, lack of housing, income level, or disability," the state said.
The state's universal preschool program covers all types of schools and offers 15 hours of free preschool each week in the year before the child enters kindergarten.
Nicholas Reaves, senior counsel at Becket and attorney for the families and preschools, told Blaze News, “Colorado promised free preschool for all, then slammed the door on families who chose a religious education for their children. After three losses in religious freedom cases at the Supreme Court, Colorado should know better. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that states cannot exclude families from government benefits because of their faith. We’re confident the Court will say the same thing here and put a stop to Colorado’s no-Catholics-need-apply rules.”
Families in the case remain hopeful that the Supreme Court will side with their appeal.
“All we want is the freedom to choose the best preschool for our kids without being punished for our faith," Dan and Lisa Sheley, Catholic parents of seven and Becket clients in the case, said in a statement provided to Blaze News. "Colorado promised families a universal preschool program, then cut out families like ours because we chose a Catholic education. We pray the Supreme Court will remind Colorado that universal means everyone.”
“Colorado is punishing young religious families. In a state that loudly preaches inclusion, it’s shocking to see Colorado go out of its way to exclude families like mine," Erika Navarrete Nagle, a Catholic mother of three whose children attend St. Mary’s, told Blaze News. "I hope the Supreme Court will make it clear that no family should be targeted for what they believe.”
The Supreme Court will hear arguments for this case in the fall.
Editor's note: The author attended St. Mary Catholic Parish and School.
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