Why is the mainstream media so obsessed with who will replace Pope Francis?



The papal conclave, which began Wednesday, has attracted unusual interest from a mainstream media normally not given to dwelling on matters of faith.

In both their reflections on the late Pope Francis and their speculations on the next supreme pontiff, the stream of articles coming out of the reputed mouthpieces of American progressivism has been a mix of regret at the passing of a noble ally and trepidation at the prospect of a less friendly pope going forward.

Benedict XVI was painted as an inflexible and cruel man, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. (He literally wrote an encyclical titled "God is Love.")

To give just a few examples, New York magazine published a piece asking, “Will Christianity Make a Turn to the Right Post-Francis?” while the Atlantic examined “Progressive Christianity’s Bleak Future.”

What is the reason for this media meltdown? Is the American media genuinely saddened by the passing of the late Holy Father and fearful for the spiritual welfare of his flock in America?

A useful tool

Certainly not. The reason for the minor hysteria among the legacy outlets is quite simple. The Francis pontificate gave the media a useful tool with which to attack and isolate American conservatives. Pope Francis was less focused on doctrinal matters than he was on pastoral concerns; it was relatively easier for the media to twist the pope’s words when he spoke about the environment and social inequality.

For example, Pope Francis published four encyclicals. Two of them, "Fratelli Tutti" and "Laudato Si," received a plethora of coverage, while the other two, "Lumen Fidei" and "Dilexit Nos," received no attention to speak of. Guess which two addressed more secular issues and which were concerned with theological topics.

Due to a number of factors, it is quite likely that the next pope will be far more conservative than Francis — more in line with his two immediate predecessors, Benedict XVI and John Paul II.

A change of attack

The writers of America’s legacy outlets are aware of this, and they are preparing to change their angle of attack. It is very likely that they will treat Francis’ successor the same way they treated his predecessor.

During the pontificate of Benedict XVI (2005-2013), there was no barrage of media articles trying to convince Americans that the pope was actually a signatory (in spirit) of the DNC platform and that conservatives were bad Christians for not following suit.

Rather, Benedict was labeled as a regressive, out-of-touch traditionalist who didn’t care about the spiritual welfare of his flock. He was painted as an inflexible and cruel man, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. (He literally wrote an encyclical titled "God is Love.") If the next pope is anything like Benedict, we can be assured the media will go right back to these calumnious attacks.

Behind the lies

The question must be asked, why do the media do this? Why do they lie about the popes again and again? It is an important question to answer in order to purge any thought from our minds that these people may be acting with a single shred of genuine religious conviction. To understand why they lie, you have to understand the sort of people they are.

A very useful example for understanding the media lies is the writer James Carroll, who has written about both Benedict and Francis for outlets such as the Atlantic, the New Yorker, and Politico. Carroll was a constant critic of Benedict and wrote articles attacking his “moral weakness” and “disastrous influence.”

When Francis assumed the office, on the other hand, Carroll took to the pages of the New Yorker to praise him as a long-awaited liberal reformer. He contrasted Francis’ seeming openness to progressive ideas with Benedict’s cold-hearted traditionalism.

However, as time went on and Francis did not live up to his progressive ideas, Carroll began decrying the pope’s failure to address patriarchy and gender inequality. By 2018, he stated that he had lost faith in Francis, but was happy to keep contrasting him with Benedict in order to divide Catholics.

Carroll is a prime example of why members of the secular media (even those "raised Catholic") should never be trusted when they comment on the Church. In Carroll's case, we are dealing with a former priest who abandoned his ministry after only five years and has spent the majority of his career since then calling the Church evil and oppressive for not conforming to his progressive ideals.

No greater love

Carroll is most famous for his 2019 Atlantic article titled "Abolish the Priesthood." In other words, there will never be a pope liberal enough for him, and the Church will never be progressive enough to make him happy. In this, too, he is typical of the mainstream media. Do not think for a second that there is even the slightest shred of genuine religious concern in these people.

The purpose of the legacy media in this country is to attack American conservatives. The people who write for these outlets are secular progressives who have liberal globalism as their highest moral ideal. They are not religious in any real sense because to them religion is merely a social construction subordinate to their political goals.

They cannot conceive of true religion as a habit of justice whereby we render to God His due for the same reason they cannot conceive of God as anything other than a vague set of social principles: nothing is more sacred to them than political liberalism.

This lack of any purpose beyond politics explains their hatred of conservatives. They cannot understand genuine religious conviction. They do not believe, and so they assume that nobody else does. They cannot act in good faith, and so they assume that nobody does. When politics is everything, the pope is just one more thing to politicize.

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Bishops vow defiance, DOJ launches probe over Washington state's new 'anti-Catholic' law



Washington state Gov. Bob Ferguson (D) ratified a bill on Friday requiring priests to break the seal of confession if informed of abuse.

As this law invites the government into the confessional, likely violates the Constitution's Establishment Clause, and puts priests at risk of automatic excommunication, Catholic bishops in Washington state have vowed defiance and the Department of Justice has launched a civil rights investigation.

Senate Bill 5375, which passed the state Senate in a 28-20 vote and the state House in a 64-31 vote, requires any person operating in an official supervisory capacity with a nonprofit or a for-profit organization — including priests, ordained ministers, and rabbis — who has "reasonable cause to believe that a child has suffered abuse or neglect" to notify law enforcement or the Department of Children, Youth and Families.

Unlike a previous version of the legislation, SB 5375 offers no carve-out for allegations learned as a result of a confession.

The final bill report actually clarifies that the Democratic law mandates no one except for members of the clergy to report abuse when that information is obtained solely as a result of a privileged communication.

'He can make no use of knowledge that confession gives him about penitents' lives.'

By mandating priests to divulge information gleaned in the confessional, the Democratic law puts priests at risk of excommunication.

The Catechism of the Catholic Church states:

Given the delicacy and greatness of this ministry and the respect due to persons, the Church declares that every priest who hears confessions is bound under very severe penalties to keep absolute secrecy regarding the sins that his penitents have confessed to him. He can make no use of knowledge that confession gives him about penitents' lives. This secret, which admits of no exceptions, is called the "sacramental seal," because what the penitent has made known to the priest remains "sealed" by the sacrament.

The Code of Canon Law cited by the Washington State Catholic Conference in its oppositional statements is similarly clear on the issue: "The sacramental seal is inviolable; therefore it is absolutely forbidden for a confessor to betray in any way a penitent in words or in any manner and for any reason."

Canon Law notes further that a "confessor who directly violates the sacramental seal incurs a latae sententiae — automatic — excommunication reserved to the Apostolic See."

Democratic state Sen. Noel Frame, a prime sponsor of the bill, did not appear to be concerned about such consequences, stating, "There are some things that it doesn't matter what religion you are in; you never put somebody's conscience over the protection of a child," reported KXLY-TV.

During debate in February, Republican state Sen. Leonard Christian noted that the legislation would force "somebody who's given their entire life — raised their hand, made an oath with God almighty — to choose between God's law and man's law."

'After the apostles were arrested and thrown into jail for preaching the name of Jesus Christ, St. Peter responds to the Sanhedrin: "We must obey God rather than men."'

Catholic bishops in the state have made clear which law takes precedence.

The Most Rev. Thomas Daly, Bishop of Spokane, reassured Catholics in his diocese Friday that their priests and bishop "are committed to keeping the seal of the confession — even to the point of going to jail.

"For those legislators who question our commitment to the safety of your children, simply speak with any mom who volunteers with a parish youth group, any Catholic school teacher, any dad who coaches a parochial school basketball team or any priest, deacon, or seminarian, and you will learn firsthand about our solid protocols and procedures," said Bishop Daly. "The Diocese of Spokane maintains an entire department at the Chancery, the Office of Child and Youth protection, staffed by professional laypeople. We have a zero-tolerance policy regarding child sexual abuse."

Seattle Archbishop Paul Etienne underscored in a statement Sunday that while the Church "agrees with the goal of protecting children and preventing child abuse" and already has policies requiring priests to be mandatory reporters, the seal of confession will not be broken.

"This weekend at Mass, the first reading was from the Acts of the Apostles. After the apostles were arrested and thrown into jail for preaching the name of Jesus Christ, St. Peter responds to the Sanhedrin: 'We must obey God rather than men' (Acts 5:29)," wrote the archbishop. "This is our stance now in the face of this new law. Catholic clergy may not violate the seal of confession — or they will be excommunicated from the Church."

'The law appears to single out clergy as not entitled to assert applicable privileges.'

"All Catholics must know and be assured that their confessions remain sacred, secure, confidential, and protected by the law of the Church," added Archbishop Etienne.

The archbishop also raised the question of why privileged communications between priest and penitent were singled out but not the communications between attorney and client, doctor and patient, and spouses.

"This new law singles out religion and is clearly both government overreach and a double standard," wrote Archbishop Etienne.

The Justice Department announced a First Amendment investigation into the Washington state law on Monday, calling SB 5375 an "anti-Catholic law."

Like Archbishop Etienne, the DOJ also expressed interest in why Washington Democrats singled out members of the clergy as the only "supervisors" who may not rely on applicable legal privileges as a defense to mandatory reporting.

"SB 5375 demands that Catholic priests violate their deeply held faith in order to obey the law, a violation of the Constitution and a breach of the free exercise of religion cannot [sic] stand under our constitutional system of government," Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the DOJ's Civil Rights Division said in a statement.

"Worse, the law appears to single out clergy as not entitled to assert applicable privileges, as compared to other reporting professionals," continued Dhillon. "We take this matter very seriously and look forward to Washington State's cooperation with our investigation."

Gov. Ferguson, who identifies as a Catholic, said in a statement obtained by the Seattle Times, "We look forward to protecting Washington kids from sexual abuse in the face of this 'investigation' from the Trump administration."

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Trump meme breaks the internet — then unmasks the left's religious hypocrisy



After decades of treating Christianity as a punch line, Democrats suddenly became staunch defenders of traditionalism over the weekend — all thanks to President Donald Trump.

Late Friday, the White House's official X account reposted an AI-generated image of Trump wearing papal vestments. The image was posted after Trump joked that he would "like to be pope," a comment made one week before the Catholic Church's cardinals convene the conclave to select Pope Francis' successor.

— (@)

The AI image went not just viral but mega viral. By Monday morning, it had been viewed more than 100 million times on X alone.

Reaction to the image fell into four general buckets:

  1. Catholics expressed outrage and offense at the image, suggesting that Trump or the White House was mocking their tradition, which could not come at a worse time as the church mourns Francis' death and prepares to select a new pope.
  2. Catholics and non-Catholic Christians thought the image was a joke and funny, not something to be upset about.
  3. Critics of President Trump expressed outrage — as they do over anything Trump does.
  4. Democrats, whose public policy subverts much of Christianity's values, pearl-clutched.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) is a prime example of No. 4.

"This is deeply offensive to me and to my fellow Catholics around the world as we continue to mourn our beloved Pope Francis," Hochul responded.

That response, too, went viral, not because Hochul is perceived to be a coherent defender of Christianity and the Catholic faith but precisely the opposite: While she now wants to posture online to win brownie points with her progressive base, she has repeatedly mocked many of Christianity's most important values.

Hochul, for example, supports radical abortion measures and has taken steps to reduce abortion regulations — even just weeks ago. Hochul has tried to force Catholics to violate their conscience, condemning them as "right-wing extremists," Hochul opposes traditional marriage, supports trans-ing children, and weaponized Jesus to force people to get the COVID-19 shot.

But suddenly a meme is a moral crisis?

The truth is: Democrats treat Christianity — traditional, conservative, orthodox Christianity — as something to be mocked, condemned, and sidelined. That's why Hochul's sudden outrage doesn't land; it's not reverence but opportunism.

If a member of the LGBTQ community posted a picture of a drag queen in papal vestments, would Hochul be similarly outraged? She'd probably call it brave.

This is yet another example of a Democrat using Christianity to score political points. If Hochul truly respected Christianity and the Catholic tradition, her policies and values would reflect it.

In the end, it's clear Trump wasn't mocking the church. But he did manage to expose just how performative (and hypocritical) the left's outrage is — and for that, we can be thankful.

Stop sacrificing your family on the altar of youth sports



Full disclosure: We were a sports family, extraordinaire. Football, ballet, gymnastics.

But then one child turned out to be immensely talented at another very consuming, very expensive Olympic sport. We upended our whole family to help her pursue this dream. As in, we moved to another state for her training, and Dad stayed behind to support the effort (i.e., pay the bills). For several years, we did not even live together as a family.

It almost broke us.

Why do we worship sports?

Most people seem to love sports, or at least, a sport. More watching than participating, of course — that’s why most of us don’t look like athletes. But we do love the “thrill of victory and the agony of defeat” to quote the old (I guess ancient, actually) ABC TV program "Wide World of Sports."

Plus, nobody does human interest stories better than sports journalists. They’re absolute masters of the tearjerker backstory: How the plucky little high school basketball player overcame rickets after his grandma died and became LeBron James. (Not LeBron James’ story, but I’m sure somewhere in there he may have been plucky.) Anyway, that kind of feel-good-now-I’m-rooting-for-him type of story.

Giving up unrushed family time is far too high a price to pay for the fleeting glory (or not) of a championship.

But you know the stories we don’t hear? The my-parents-divorced-after-living-apart-for-training stories.

There were a lot of those at the Olympic training center where my daughter trained. Or the non-prodigy-child-got-into-trouble-in-a-desperate-bid-for-attention story. Or the we-bankrupted-our-family-no-college-money-now story. We saw all of these play out in families around us.

For every heartwarming Olympic or NFL or Master’s tournament story, there are thousands of child sports stories that don’t end with a medal, ring, title, or even a scholarship. But they do end in damaged families, fractured relationships, debt, and regret. Of all the people who “gave up everything” to train — only a tiny fraction get a big reward.

Here’s the thing: Even the “big winners” pay this steep price, and in most cases, it's not worth it. Let me explain.

It’s a zero-sum game

You can’t give up huge chunks of your family life to the demanding taskmaster of organized kids’ sports without consequences. You can’t give up huge chunks of your family life for any reason without consequences. But in America today, organized sports are hijacking a healthy family dynamic.

Christian families in particular should have a higher goal for family life than endless shuttling to kids’ activities. But the endless shuttling hurts any family.

Let’s examine what everyone gives up when your child plays a sport, especially club team sports or extremely time-intensive individual sports.

The casualty, dead on arrival, is this: unrushed family time. And I submit for your consideration that giving up unrushed family time is far too high a price to pay for the fleeting glory (or not) of a championship or even a scholarship.

Why? Because what starts as an innocent once-a-week activity never gets less time-consuming (or less expensive). The demands only grow. Eventually, your family’s entire schedule — your whole family life — revolves around the coach’s requirements, not yours. Or the coaches’ requirements if you have more than one kid involved.

And if you have one kid involved, you have to make sure the others get “equal time” in another sport or activity. It’s only fair, right?

I’ve watched many parents go off in different directions every weekend, dad taking daughter to her weekend volleyball tournament, mom taking son to baseball practice and games. They reunite in exhaustion late Sunday night, only to start the week’s practice schedule all over again.

But this setup — catering to multiple children’s sports and activities — will eat up the fleeting time you have with your children and spit out nothing of value.

Even if one of them goes on to become an Olympic gold medalist, the cost will have been too high because, as I’ve written before, children are best served when they spend the bulk of their time with the people who love them the most: their family.

What is a family for?

Everyday family life at home is where faith is taught and demonstrated, where character is developed, where relationships are strengthened, where children are raised to become people who love God and others.

We need family time for all this to happen. Unhurried family dinners. Regular church attendance together. Time exploring the natural world together, minus screens. Taking the kids to visit a nursing home or to serve at a soup kitchen. Spontaneous weekend road trips to visit the grandparents, the cousins, the forest, or the beach. Long conversations about anything and everything.

As Christians, we are raising children to be people who love God and others. Children’s sports activities offer nothing toward this goal. What they do tend to emphasize, however, is the self. If my family’s life is mostly focused on my sport practices, games, and goals, I am learning that it really is all about me, despite what my parents say.

Actions speak much louder than words.

Individual sports, where there is no team component, are probably even worse because the focus is on one child individually. But make no mistake: Your kids don’t need to be on a sports team to learn teamwork. God put them on a team already, and it's your family.

That is the team that will permanently suffer if other sports and activities are allowed to dominate your family life.

If your children are currently in a demanding sport, you know that “team family” is not getting quality time together — or maybe any time together. When’s the last time you all sat down to eat dinner together without having to rush off? When’s the last time you had an unhurried, deep conversation?

The church issue is not the only issue

Club sports, in particular, seem to delight in scheduling practices and games in such a way that there is rarely an untouched weekend. I’ve watched countless families drop off the radar at church because tournaments and games are scheduled not only all day Saturday but on Sunday as well, often involving travel that eats up the whole weekend.

About a year ago, a pastor in Texas posted about this phenomenon on X and how their family took a stand against Sunday sports participation, which caused his daughter some grief. While I admire parents who push back against sports being the most important thing on their schedule, I can’t help but think there’s a lot more to discipling your children than showing up at church on Sunday.

In other words, it’s not enough to just draw a boundary around Sunday.

Discipleship takes time. Years, in fact, which is why God designed little people to begin life in families that show them the way, day in and day out, through loving and secure relationships with — again — the people who love them the most. Time goes by quickly — and it's something you never get back.

Every minute you spend focusing on a child’s sport is a minute you are not spending focusing on something more valuable. You cannot center your family life around a child’s sport or activity and not skew their view of him/herself and his/her relationship to your family and to the world. The message sent is really that it’s all about you, kid.

This may be, in part, what’s to blame for a generation of extraordinarily entitled young people. If your parents were not much more to you than chauffeurs to your every practice and activity (and the wallets to pay for it), you probably have an overinflated view of your own importance.

I’m not saying that every former child/teen athlete is insufferably self-centered, although a lot of them are. But I am saying they are not the people they could have been with mindfully attentive parenting instead of abandonment to a sport.

Was it all worth it?

Does the Olympic gold medal make up for a childhood spent training apart from your family?

The child who wins the medal surely thinks it’s worth it because that child has been trained, as noted, to consider his/her pursuit the most important thing. But it wasn’t.

Our culture absolutely glorifies this — the medal winner, the NFL Draft pick, the title holder. Every once in a while, there’s a story that highlights the sacrifices made to achieve the medal or title, and those sacrifices are always framed as noble.

But sacrificing the precious little time you have with your children on the altar of pursuing sports (or any other) excellence is not noble. It is tragic. Sending your child to train somewhere away from you is the ultimate tragic choice.

Christian parents: I beg you to prioritize better than we did.

A few final thoughts

Sports offer some benefits, to be sure. If they can be incorporated into your child’s life in a way that doesn’t suck up other more valuable pursuits, great.

In retrospect, which is all I have at this point, I wish we’d enrolled the whole family in martial arts together. That would have provided a “life sport” that we could have done together as a family.

Yeah, we have a lot of regret. We can’t get back the years our family was split up to accommodate a training regimen. We can’t have the conversations we would have had, the meals we would have enjoyed together, the trips we might have taken, or the opportunities to serve others together that we could have experienced.

So I implore you to prayerfully consider your extremely limited family time, choosing to use it for God’s glory instead of your child’s. This is, after all, why God put children in families — so they can grow in secure and loving guidance. They need you more than they need anything else while they’re under your roof.

For us, our time with our kids is, even now, by far our favorite time. We just wish we had used it better for them, for us, and for the Lord we love.

Telepathy is real — but no, not like that



A couple of weeks ago, I woke up to this text message from my friend: “Telepathy Tapes on Spotify. YOU MUST LISTEN.”

It’s not the first time a hyped friend or family member has told me I have to listen to this podcast, watch that video, or read some article. Most of the time, the content people send me is good, but it’s not mind-bending.

This time it was.

I started listening to episode one in the background, intending to get some chores done while I half-listened. It took all of five minutes for me to become completely and totally engrossed. No chores were completed that day.

Episode one opens with this: “For decades, a very specific group of people have been claiming telepathy is happening in their homes and classrooms, and nobody has believed them; nobody has listened to them, but on this podcast, we do.”

While that “we” captures an entire host of cinematographers and scientists, the two main pillars in the show are Ky Dickens, an established documentarian and the host of the series, and the doctor who inspired the podcast, Diane Hennacy Powell, a John Hopkins-trained psychiatrist, neuroscientist, and researcher and former Harvard Medical School faculty member.

Her studies on telepathy, however, have often alienated her from those institutions. At one point, Dr. Powell was even fined and her medical license temporarily revoked for publishing her research. Sadly, in today’s world, that makes me more likely to take an interest in her work. Doctors willing to suffer scrutiny and even outright rejection to get the facts — especially the ones that are incompatible with the political narrative or that don’t fit nicely into the rigid box of Western medicine — are doctors who have my attention.

It’s another phenomenon the scientific community likes to dance around because no one can prove how it’s happening.

Dickens explains early in episode one that studies in extrasensory perception — telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and the like — are dismissed by the scientific community because to entertain such concepts requires challenging science’s fiercely guarded modus operandi: materialism, the godless worldview that argues physical matter and the interaction between it are all there is.

The framework contends that if something can’t be explained by physics, then it isn’t real.

As a Christian, I’ve always known this paradigm is fundamentally flawed, void of hope, and deeply arrogant. To witness two non-Christians (and one a medical doctor) boldly rebuff this doctrine and embrace phenomena in the name of truth-seeking, regardless of consequences to their careers and reputations, was as compelling as the research itself.

As I mentioned earlier, the duo explore purported telepathic abilities in a niche population: Non-speaking autistic individuals who face significant motor challenges. Let me paint a picture of what that can look like.

Neurotypicals (people who do not have a cognitive disability) often use phrases like they’re not “all there” to describe these individuals. Historically, doctors have assumed they are unintelligent, have intellectual disabilities, and/or are incapable of typical cognition. Back when I taught high school English, these kids were placed in the “Life Skills” classroom, where they were fed, cleaned, and constantly attended to. The little education they received involved skills you might teach a toddler. On the rare occasion we saw them, they were often making strange, incomprehensible noises, acting in ways that would be considered inappropriate, or staring off into some void.

Now imagine that this population is taught to communicate using letter boards or typing devices.

That is who this podcast centers around.

They’re called “spellers.” And I confess, before I listened to this series, if you’d asked me what a nonverbal autistic person with serious motor challenges would say if taught to communicate, my answer would not have been the most optimistic.

This podcast has been a stern rebuking of sorts. Once they’ve been taught to communicate, all the participants featured in the podcast reveal that they aren’t just “all there” — they’re ultra there. Some are geniuses, others poets. Many are brimming with wisdom that feels like it came from Solomon himself. Most speak of a great cosmic love, claim to access non-earthly realms, purport an afterlife, and exhibit supernatural gifts.

In short, Dr. Powell encountered this fringe group in her studies on savants — that is, people who can do miraculous things, like perform calculus equations, expertly play the piano, or speak eight languages, without ever having been taught. It’s another phenomenon the scientific community likes to dance around because no one can prove how it’s happening.

During these studies, Dr. Powell began receiving emails from parents all over the world claiming their children could read their minds or others’ minds with perfect accuracy. This led to studies in which she tested these claims.

Her conclusion? It’s all true — there are mind readers living among us.

In 2008, she published her work in a book titled “The ESP Enigma: The Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena.” Years later, Dickens stumbled upon it, was shocked by the information she read, and, after developing a relationship with Dr. Powell, produced a documentary-like podcast called “The Telepathy Tapes,” in which she recreated and expanded Dr. Powell’s original experiments on these remarkable people.

After practically bingeing the entire series and reading through feedback from listeners, something has been bothering me: There seems to be a lack of Christian perspective on “The Telepathy Tapes.” I’ve seen lots of commentary from universalists, spiritualists, and New Agers but literally none from Christians. It could be that the podcast is still gaining traction and hasn’t reached many believers yet, or perhaps Christians are talking about it in circles I’m not privy to.

In either case, “The Telepathy Tapes” demand a Christian response, as the findings and stories outlined in the series can only be described as spiritual. Even more, I think the podcast’s popularity signals a turning of cultural tides toward a re-mystified view of the world, as materialism has failed to offer hope or provide answers to humanity’s most pressing questions.

Christians should be waiting at that juncture with answers.

Miracles on tape

The first half of “The Telepathy Tapes” is devoted almost entirely to experimentation. Dickens conducts a series of tests aimed at assessing non-speakers’ alleged telepathic gifts. Experiments are filmed, and every measure is taken to ensure that cheating is an impossibility. Screens, mirrors, and windows are covered; blindfolds are used; child and parent are often tested in separate spaces so they have zero contact.

From every angle, the experiments certainly seem bulletproof. Video footage of many of the tests can be accessed on thetelepathytapes.com. And yes, I’ve watched them. Either there’s a bunch of very normal-looking families out there using their nonspeaking autistic children to perform reality-warping magic tricks, or psychic phenomena are indeed happening.

Here’s just one example of a test Dickens’ team conducted. A nonverbal autistic college student named Akhil sits across the room facing in the opposite direction from his mother, the person he has mentally merged with. Dickens, using a random word generator, shows his mother a strange, unfamiliar term, ensuring the entire time that it remains out of Akhil’s sight. Using his communication device, he then types the word exactly as his mother is seeing it. He does this again and again, with 100% accuracy. He then moves on to other tests that involve identifying book pages, abstract images, and four-digit numbers his mother views. He never misses a single question.

Akhil is one of several non-speakers the team runs through these kinds of experiments. Every speller they test exhibits the same remarkable ability.

In the second half of the series, Dickens’ team travels around the world, meeting with parents, teachers, non-speakers, and other scientists in the field of ESP. Believe it or not, this part of “The Telepathy Tapes” is even more fascinating than the first.

'My job on Earth is to make all the Earth hear that God is love.'

The stories these families, teachers, and non-speakers tell are paradigm-shifting.

A former teacher reflects on a non-speaking student she had years ago. One time, when she was grocery shopping, she grabbed a few of his favorite snacks to bring to him the next day at school. Before she ever mentioned the treats, which were locked in her car, he had drawn a picture of every single item she had purchased.

In another incredible anecdote, a mother describes a dream she had when her nonverbal autistic son was young. In the dream, she sees him standing before her, but he speaks and moves normally, free of his earthly restrictions. He presents her with an ace of spades card and urges her to wake up. The next morning, he hands her an ace of spades card, mirroring his action in the dream. She discovers he intentionally entered her dream intending to communicate with her. They begin regularly meeting, speaking, and writing music together via lucid dreaming.

Other fascinating stories include a girl who knows the exact details of the strange event that caused her teacher to be late to school, a boy who places his hand on books and absorbs all the information inside without cracking them open, and a 10-year-old girl who types cryptic warnings before national tragedies occur.

However, in the last few episodes, the podcast takes a hard spiritual turn when Dickens and her research team encounter phenomena and hear stories that don't just challenge the West’s materialist paradigm but shatter it completely.

The most powerful story by far in the podcast is equal parts tragic and beautiful.

One of the boys featured in “The Telepathy Tapes” dies suddenly from a seizure. Many of his autistic non-speaking friends, however, separately reported that he knew his time was up and had telepathically said his goodbyes to them in the days leading up to his death. At his funeral, these children, using their communication devices, all reported that angels filled the room.

The most powerful line in the podcast comes from a young man named Houston, whose mother believed for the first 17 years of his life that he was practically brain-dead. Once he becomes a speller, his mother discovers he is not only incredibly intelligent but also deeply spiritual.

At one point in the podcast, he types this: “My job on Earth is to make all the Earth hear that God is love. So great is love that no one will have any need to fear when they sink into its depths. … When you’ve seen what I’ve seen, there is no doubt.”

Almost all non-speakers, at least the ones featured in this podcast, speak of God in similar ways, regularly encounter angels, interact with spirits of people who have died, and know information they have no way of accessing. More than one child in the series referred to non-speakers as “light workers.”

Other spiritual strangeness includes a pediatric speech pathologist who sees a body of light hovering above her 4-year-old nonverbal autistic patient, a child savant who speaks numerous languages claiming “God” and “the gods” taught her how to do it, a 7-year-old boy whose very first typed sentence is “God is a good gift giver,” and a boy who hears the specific prayers of a man he’s never seen or met.

One peculiar trait most of these spellers have in common is that their verbiage and syntax are strange and poetic.

One teacher featured in “The Telepathy Tapes,” who’s worked with hundreds of these nonverbal autistic children in the U.S., describes their communication like this: “They have a way of speaking, a style of speaking, that is not of this earth. It’s not English grammar; there’s a lightness to it; there’s often love infused with it; there’s wisdom in there.”

Dickens, after reading hundreds of messages from these gifted people, corroborates this notion when she says they communicate like they’re “from the time of the Torah.”

At this point, the research team has no choice but to contend with the flip side of the materialist worldview: Spiritualism, the idea that reality involves a physical and a non-physical dimension, which interact with each other.

At one point, Dickens asks, “Are we consciousness? Are we an illusion or hologram? Are we spirit? Are we light?” Her skeptical cameraman Michael waxed less poetic when, following a series of miraculous demonstrations, he asks, “Do I have to believe in God now?”

While no one in the podcast emerges from the research with their materialist worldview intact, no one arrives at, or even considers, Christianity either. Their new paradigm, while differing slightly from person to person, is predicated on the belief that consciousness is the foundation of the universe and the source of everything that exists.

What’s disheartening to me is that they’re describing Genesis 1:1.

A great “consciousness” did indeed exist before everything else and is the source of all things. His name is Yahweh. I Am Who I Am. But they can’t make that final leap to the divine, similar to how Big Bang theorists believe in an explosion of light and matter but can’t see they’re reiterating the creation story.

Even still, it’s encouraging to see people who have long rejected the divine open their hearts to the possibility that there is something greater than humanity out there. Perhaps believing in telepathy will be the genesis of a spiritual journey that eventually leads to God.

Prophecy, tongues, and telepathy

As for these non-speakers and their miraculous abilities, my first thought was how unbelievably tragic to be cognitively capable (perhaps excessively so) and deeply spiritual but unable to share that with those around you.

Imagine you encounter angels, write music in your dreams, and have the soul of a poet, but your body betrays you, and so your gifts are invisible to your family, who talk to you like you’re 2 years old, if they talk to you at all. Can you fathom the excruciation?

While the non-speakers featured in “The Telepathy Tapes” are fortunate enough to have families who put them in spelling programs that give them a voice, the truth is that the majority of non-speaking autistic people are never taught to communicate, and so they spend their lives muzzled — their potential shut up in a vault nobody can see. I pray this podcast reaches the families of non-speakers and becomes a doorway to a brighter future for them.

My second thought was: What’s really going on with these people? If they are indeed communicating telepathically, seeing into the spirit realm, and exhibiting other supernatural gifts — and it certainly seems that they are — where did they get these abilities, and why do they have them?

I think the 7-year-old boy I mentioned above whose first sentence was “God is a good gift giver” said the answer. These seem to be gifts from God.

Many of them, we see in scripture. What scientists call precognition — the ability to perceive future events — the Bible calls prophecy. What ESP calls clairvoyance — the ability to perceive information about people, events, or objects beyond the range of normal sensory perception — overlaps significantly with the spiritual gift of “words of knowledge.” Encounters with angelic beings are well documented throughout scripture, as is the gift of godly wisdom, which, as I mentioned, many of these non-speakers appear to have.

Telepathy, however, is not explicitly mentioned in the Bible, unless we’re talking about the omniscient triune God who obviously has access to our thoughts. However, telepathy does share some characteristics of the spiritual gift of speaking in tongues, of which there are two types.

The first type, called “tongues of men,” involves the ability to suddenly speak in a foreign language for the purpose of spreading the gospel. The second type is called "tongues of angels” and involves private prayer spoken in a supernatural language understood only by God. Both are a type of communication that is atypical and not accessible to everyone.

Telepathy is also an atypical mode of communication with specific purposes that is not universally accessible. Similar to tongues of men, telepathy allows non-speakers to communicate with neurotypicals where communication has been impossible. Similar to tongues of angels, non-speakers report that telepathy is their primary mode of communication with other non-speakers, meaning their conversations are private and not accessible to others.

While it is undoubtedly distinct from speaking in tongues, I can’t help but wonder if telepathy could also be a God-given gift of communication, specifically designed for those who have been tragically barred from connecting with the world via speaking. Might it be a bridge to community for people who were made for relationship but struggle to access it?

I don’t know the answers to those questions. I only know that anything that crosses my path must be evaluated by the truth of God’s word. We know from scripture that spiritual gifts are real; we know the Bible is full of strange occurrences; we know God designed all people to exist in relationship with others; and we know He is close to the brokenhearted.

I don’t think it’s far-fetched to speculate that He’s made a way for non-speakers where there was none. God is in the business of way-making. He did it for Noah before the flood, for the Israelites when he parted the Red Sea, for David when he faced Goliath, and, most importantly, for humanity through the sacrifice of Jesus.

People see the cracks in the West’s materialist paradigm and are interested in what powers are blinking through those fissures.

Who’s to say He’s not making a way for this vulnerable population that has been robbed of something so precious as their voice?

That’s not to say, however, that all non-speaking autistic people with these gifts are using them for kingdom work or have personal relationships with Jesus Christ. Some spellers featured in the podcast communicate spiritual ideas that diametrically oppose scripture.

For example, one girl claims that all religions have different names for the same God. Several non-speakers championed the pantheistic or New Age philosophy that the foundation of the cosmos is an impersonal consciousness, free of divine authority — we’re all just beautiful consciousnesses connected to this great universal power, kind of like Eywa in the "Avatar" movies.

These are demonic ideas. So what are we to make of these spellers and their gifts?

Again, I don’t have answers, just conjectures. It seems to me that these non-speakers have at least partial access to the spirit realm — almost as if their consciousness resides somewhere between Earth and the spiritual dimension. Their spiritual messages vary from absolutely true (God is a good gift giver) to absolutely false (Buddha = God), but that makes sense when you consider that the spirit realm is inhabited by both angelic and demonic beings. Some of these heretical ideas must be coming from the demonic beings.

Exceptional as these non-speakers are, they are still human and thus caught up in the spiritual warfare that impacts us all. Their vantage point is just different.

A re-mystified world

Even though Ky Dickens, Dr. Powell, and the vast majority of people involved in “The Telepathy Tapes” land somewhere in the realm of metaphysics or spiritualism — neither of which lead to ultimate truth — I still say the series is a win for God’s kingdom.

The fact that this podcast was produced and is rapidly gaining popularity means that people see the cracks in the West’s materialist paradigm and are interested in what powers are blinking through those fissures. It means people can’t help but be discontented with finality and hope for something infinite. It means we are becoming more human again — sloughing off our robotic “science explains everything” Enlightenment thinking and adopting a more humble approach that doesn’t assume we are the greatest thing in the universe.

This is progress.

For Christians, however, “The Telepathy Tapes” is a reminder that the Bible, while sufficient for our earthly lives, only gives us a small window into our magnificent Creator. In Exodus, He says that no one can gaze upon His face and live. In Isaiah, we are reminded that His ways and thoughts are different from ours. In Job, we are told that no man can fathom the mysteries of God or understand His limitlessness. In Romans, we are warned against even attempting to comprehend His judgments, for no man can know the mind of the Lord.

The book of John concludes with this powerful line: “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them were written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.”

Bottom line: We have been given merely a taste of our Lord.

Sometimes it’s good to be reminded of how much we don’t know. Similar to materialists, Christians also have their worldview rocked when phenomena aren’t easily explained by scripture. We, too, can make the mistake of dismissing something as impossible simply because our doctrine doesn’t explain it. But this makes God in our image. We like things to make sense.

But God has told us that we will never make perfect sense of Him, at least on this side of heaven.

“The Telepathy Tapes,” while strange and paradigm-shifting, has strengthened my faith by reminding me that I don’t have to, nor am I meant to, understand everything about God or His spoken cosmos. No mystery or phenomenon challenges His goodness.

Trump's baby bonus won't work — but we already know the real solution



People are finally noticing that there aren’t as many children as there used to be.

Because demography is destiny when it comes to the future — as opposed to, say, climate science or fortune cookies — even people who don’t like children are alarmed. In case you’ve not heard, times have changed. We’ve gone from worrying about a population bomb to fretting about a population bust. The fertility rate is tanking.

We know what happened — we just don't want to admit it: Our society lost faith in God.

The math is simple: We need every woman to bear at least 2.1 children to maintain a steady population, or about two children to replace every man and woman alive. The 0.1 accounts for the sad fact that some children don’t live to see adulthood.

Let this sink in: I said every woman, not some women. Every. Single. Woman.

Of course, there have always been childless women. But other women have always made up the difference. We must be blunt: Our distaste for reality is acute. For every woman who does not bear children, there must be two women who have three or another who has four. You might not like the math, but too bad.

I know this is an unpopular message. Just mention the facts, and feminists clutch copies of "The Handmaid's Tale" to their breasts.

So how bad is it? Here are the numbers: Last year, the fertility rate in the United States dropped to 1.62 children per woman. But in the global race to zero, we're a laggard.

By comparison, here are a few other nations:

  • The United Kingdom: 1.53
  • Hungary: 1.5
  • Switzerland: 1.44
  • Greece: 1.34
  • Chile: 1.17
  • China: 1.02
  • Singapore: 0.97
  • South Korea: 0.75

While it is true that the global population continues to rise, that's because people are taking longer to die. And despite the best efforts of Bryan Johnson and Ray Kurzweil (a couple of "don't die" techno-utopians), the death rate is still 100%. This means that the global population, when it finally begins to do gown, will drop like a rock.

For some people, this is great news. They don't like kids anyway, and they're not too sure about the rest of us. But the implications are bad for everything from social welfare to technological innovation to even personal happiness.

We've been fooling ourselves. Social Security and your retirement savings are not replacements for children (i.e., the original retirement plan). Young adults with children to feed do most of the consuming and innovating in any economy. And with fewer children, we're likely to experience economic stagnation and decline for the foreseeable future.

There are naysayers — there always are. In this case, techno-utopians assure us that AI and robots will fill the gaps. But Elon Musk (of all people) isn't so sanguine. And while he is doing his part (with 14 children), no one would call him "Dad of the Year." He scatters his seed like Genghis Khan. His children will have the best of everything, I'm sure, but what they won't have is a father in the home. Honest sociologists and psychologists (not easy to find) say this is one of the most important factors when raising healthy children, a fact people don't like to admit.

So what do we do?

Recently, the Trump administration floated the idea of a $5,000 incentive for every baby born. Really? Back in 2017, a Department of Agriculture study estimated that raising a child to the age of 17 would cost a whopping $233,610. While that number is absurd in its own right, no one denies that children are expensive.

The U.S. is not the first to try to incentivize childbearing. Some countries, such as Hungary and South Korea, have been doing it for a while.

The question is: Does it work? But as you noticed from the fertility rate numbers above, no. The incentives have barely moved the needle in those countries.

But why doesn't it work? People desperate for answers wonder what is responsible for the declining birth rates. Sperm counts? Something in the air?

While environmental toxins do contribute to infertility, the real culprit is modernity itself. It is the most powerful sterilization drug ever invented. In our thoroughly modern "have it your way" world, people aren't even getting married — let alone having children. It's the same everywhere. In fact, it's even more the case in the Orient than in the Occident. Turns out, China did not need that "one-child" policy. They finally eliminated it, but modernity cemented it.

Let's get real. People don't have children for the money, and declining fertility can't be explained away by falling sperm counts. We know what happened — we just don't want to admit it.

Our society lost faith in God.

Secularists know this, but it makes them uneasy. In 2011, sociologist Eric Kaufmann wrote the book "Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth? Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century." The book has barely received a modest four-star rating on Amazon. Not because he isn't right — but precisely because he is.

Kaufmann's message is clear: Even in the modern world, religious people have children — and lots of them. Because of their high fertility rates, the future belongs to them.

Religious people have a lot of children because they believe that life has meaning and purpose and that the sacrifices required to bring new life into the world are worth it. In the modern world, with its emphasis on markets and quantifiable things, religious faith is dismissed as nothing more than a matter of personal taste. But if you ask people of devout faith, they would never say it like that, because religious faith isn't concerned with personal preferences but with reality itself.

The faithful don't believe in their religions because they're "fulfilling." They believe in them because they think they're true.

Christianity doesn't have a corner on the pro-natal market, but it does have a long and illustrious history of encouraging childbearing and raising children in the faith. Recently, liberal churches have equivocated on this, and some are downright hostile to traditional forms of family life.

But those churches are dying. It won't be long before they're nothing more than cautionary tales.

I'm honored to serve a church in one of America's most liberal states. Despite this, our church has many large and growing families. I estimate the fertility rate in my congregation to be approximately four children per woman. Some women, of course, have more than four children. Fathers in my congregation take an active role in not only providing for their children, but raising them as well.

My church is not isolated. When I travel, I see the same phenomenon playing out in churches across the country. Churches are growing, those that believe children are a heritage from the Lord.

Our churches, of course, aren't heaven on earth, and we don't live in epistemic bubbles. My wife and I come from families made up largely of academics and artists, so we're accustomed to "alternative lifestyles." In fact, we have many childless relatives who are bitter, lonely, and oddly self-righteous. They think they can gin up the purpose of their lives out of their own desires. But they're failing — clearly.

The future doesn't belong to them, and, frankly, they don't care. Progressives don't live for tomorrow. They live for the present moment. Religious people, on the other hand — the traditionally religious — live for the future.

If demography is destiny, we will indeed inherit the earth.

Not a fairy tale: Is science proving the Bible's supernatural claims?



Renowned Christian author Lee Strobel said Americans' interest in a "realm beyond that which we can see and touch" drove him to write his latest book — an exploration of the supernatural.

Strobel, who recently released "Seeing the Supernatural: Investigating Angels, Demons, Mystical Dreams, Near-Death Encounters, and Other Mysteries of the Unseen World," said data showing the majority of Americans believe in these biblical topics led him to want to go deeper.

'It's not fraud, it's not fakery. There are documented cases.'

"It told me that this is a bridge where we can connect with people who may be far from God and yet have an interest in the supernatural," he told me and actress Jen Lilley on our new "Into the Supernatural" podcast. "It may be an entryway for them to really learn about what the Bible does teach about the world beyond our physical realm."

Strobel continued, "Being an evangelist, that was always my desire."

But the author, who called it an "adventure" to have the chance to dive into these topics over the past few years, said some Christians are hesitant to fully embrace each sentiment.

With that in mind, Strobel was careful to choose cases with a great deal of corroboration to help bring these issues to light. Near-death experiences are just one arena where he was fascinated to see powerful evidence that something supernatural had unfolded.

"You begin to see documented cases of near-death experiences where people see or hear things that would have been impossible for them to see or hear if they hadn't had an authentic out-of-body experience after their clinical death," Strobel said. "It just reinforces what scripture tells us about the supernatural realm, and I think it gives us more courage."

Strobel shared one such story about a woman who was clinically dead in a hospital and who claimed to have had her spirit separate from her body.

She said she traveled to the ceiling during the experience and could see her body being resuscitated.

"When she was ultimately revived, she said, 'Oh, by the way, on the ceiling fan here in the emergency room, on the upper part of the blade ... is a red sticker,'" he recounted. "And she couldn't have seen it. Nobody could see it from the room because it's on the upper part of the blade of the ceiling. So they got a ladder, and they went up, and, sure enough, there's the red sticker that she only could have seen from her perspective of her spirit floating near the ceiling of the emergency room."

Strobel encountered other examples like this, which he included in the book.

Issues like this are getting increasing attention in culture as faith seems to be making a resurgence. And Strobel said he's noticing something else — that for the first time in history, "People are doing scientific inquiries into miracles" in an attempt to prove their existence.

"In other words, they're testing them scientifically and with documentation in a way that I don't think has been done that much in the past," Strobel said. "And we're seeing cases of documented miracles that are really waking up people to the fact that this is not wishful thinking, it's not ... the placebo effect, it's not fraud, it's not fakery. There are documented cases."

He also cited the case of medical healing surrounding a blind woman whose husband prayed for her one night, imploring the Lord to heal her vision.

"He says, 'Lord, I know you can heal blindness. I know you can do it. And Lord, I pray you do it tonight. I pray you do it right now,'" Strobel recounted. "And she opened her eyes to perfect eyesight, and which has remained fine for 47 years so far."

Medically documented stories like this have Strobel convinced "something is going on" — something he believes is truly miraculous.

"And I think this is kind of opening people's eyes to the fact that these aren't just stories that you hear at Sunday school or whatever," he said. "But you dig down into many of these stories and you find substance, and you find people with eyewitnesses who have no motive to deceive. You have medical records and so forth."

This article originally appeared on CBN’s Faithwire.

Is Jesus a liberal? Democrat senator weaponizes Christ — then condemns himself



Does the Democratic Party have a monopoly on Christ?

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.), a pastor and progressive Democrat, recently implied as much. In fact, Warnock suggested that his political views are not only aligned with scripture, but they are synonymous with the teachings of Jesus Christ. And for anyone who disagrees with him, such as Republicans, he believes they're not only wrong — but they're abusing Jesus.

Warnock said on "The View":

I think Jesus is the biggest victim of identity theft in this country. I don’t know who this Jesus is they’re talking about. The Jesus I know was born in a barrio called Bethlehem, raised in a ghetto called Nazareth. He was an immigrant, smuggled into Egypt.

In another interview on MSNBC, Warnock spewed the same message. He said Jesus is a "victim of identity theft" — suggesting that Republicans are the perpetrator — and implied Republicans are acting in cruel, anti-Christian ways when they cut government funding.

Jesus, the progressive?

Warnock's message is dangerous. It is the theological equivalence of gerrymandering: He is redrawing moral and theological boundaries so that only his side can claim righteousness.

Even worse, Warnock is using his definition of righteousness to divide between the sheep and the goats, replacing Christ's teachings with progressive policies. In his telling, only progressive policies are truly Christlike, while conservative policies are anti-Christian.

Warnock wants to baptize progressive politics, call it righteousness, and condemn his opponents into outer darkness.

Warnock describes himself as a "Matthew 25 Christian," referring to Jesus' famous teaching that Democrats love to weaponize against conservative Christians, to emphasize the Democratic Party's supposed concern for the poor and marginalized. It sounds noble. But who is opposed to caring for the needs of the poor, victimized, and marginalized? Certainly not conservative Christians. It's what Christians have done for 2,000 years!

The truth is that conservative Christians disagree on the means. They do not believe a large, centralized, power-hungry government is the best way to achieve this goal. Yet, Warnock talks as if anyone who doesn't support his preferred legislation is abandoning Christ.

In recasting his policy preferences as the only legitimate Christian action, Warnock condemns himself with the exact kind of holier-than-thou spiritual arrogance that he accuses others of.

Especially troubling is the fact that Warnock, a pastor of a historic church, would frame his political opponents as morally and spiritually compromised — and opponents of Christ Himself — rather than acknowledging the legitimate policy disagreements among his fellow Christian brothers and sisters.

It should go without saying: If you oppose government "solutions," that does not mean you oppose Christ.

Jesus healed the sick, cared for the poor, and gave hope to the marginalized. He did that because He is God — not because He is a government bureaucrat.

Warnock, guilty as charged

Not only is Warnock engaging in a rhetorical game to shame Christians for policy disagreements, but he is reducing the Gospel to progressive social policy.

It's not prophetic boldness, though it resonates with his base. It's dishonest spiritual gatekeeping.

The irony is palpable: Warnock accuses his opponents of stealing Jesus' "identity" and weaponizing Christianity, while he does exactly that. He uses Christ as a partisan mascot to gain moral leverage over his political opponents.

This game isn't new for Warnock. Ever since he entered politics, he has leveraged his Christian faith to advance the Democratic Party's agenda.

Warnock is very concerned about the victim, poor, and marginalized. But what about unborn children? Warnock, of course, boasts about being a "pro-choice pastor," and he cannot name a single abortion restriction that he endorses. This example alone proves the hollowness of Warnock's browbeating. If he were truly concerned about every marginalized person — those who do not have "power" or a "voice" — certainly he would advocate for the protection of every unborn life, each of which is formed in God's image and has neither power nor a voice.

Now, Warnock is using his political leverage to oppose immigration policies that, despite critics, aren't unbiblical. Christ never said that America has a moral and spiritual obligation to welcome with open arms every migrant who desires to live here.

The Kingdom of God is not of this world. But Warnock wants to baptize progressive politics, call it righteousness, and condemn his opponents into outer darkness.

It isn't Christianity. It's pure political and spiritual manipulation.

Christians must reject Warnock's attempt to conflate his progressive gospel with the good news that Jesus preached. Christ seeks not political conformity but repentance and disciples.

The Son of God doesn't take marching orders from the Democratic Party. He is Lord, and He won't be used.