Lawyers must call male runners ‘trans females’ in athletics lawsuit

Washington D.C., Sep 30, 2019 / 12:30 pm (CNA).- The Justice Department (DOJ) said on Friday that the Archdiocese of Indianapolis is protected by the First Amendment in its request that a Catholic school dismiss a teacher for publicly violating Church … […]

Washington D.C., Jul 1, 2019 / 04:18 pm (CNA).- The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case addressing the question of whether states can deny tax credit programs to parents and children who choose religious private schools.

“States cannot base laws on hostility to religion. Likewise, no provision of Montana’s constitution can enshrine hostility to religion into state law. We commend the Supreme Court for taking this case,” Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel John Bursch said in a June 28 statement.

The case, Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, was decided 5-2 in the Montana Supreme Court late last year.

The ruling found that the state’s tax credit program, which provided for a dollar-for-dollar tax credit for a person’s donation to nonprofit student scholarship organizations, permitted the Montana legislature to “indirectly pay tuition at private, religiously-affiliated schools” in violation of state law.

The Montana Supreme Court concluded that the tax credit program violated the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, and that the Montana state constitution was even stricter in this regard than the U.S. constitution.

On June 28 the Supreme Court granted cert, meaning it will review the case when the new term begins in October.

Bursch cited a Supreme Court case from 2017, Trinity Lutheran Church of Columbia Inc. v. Comer, which ruled that a church-owned playground can be eligible for a public benefit program. The state’s natural resources department ultimately ruled the church ineligible for the program because of its religious status, but the Supreme Court ruled that the denial of the church’s eligibility for the program violated the free exercise clause.

“As the U.S. Supreme Court unequivocally reaffirmed in that decision, states cannot impose ‘special disabilities on the basis of religious views or religious status,’” he said.

CNA reported in March on a proposed federal tax credit-based scholarship program could provide a boost for parents who want to send their children to Catholic school. The proposed scheme, which U.S. Department of Education calls Education Freedom Scholarships, would be funded through taxpayers’ voluntary contributions to state-identified Scholarship Granting Organizations. Should the propsal become law, donors will receive a federal tax credit equal to their contribution.

According to the education department, the tax credit program could mean “a historic investment in America’s students, injecting up to $5 billion yearly into locally controlled scholarship programs that empower students to choose the learning environment and style that best meets their unique needs.”

The National Catholic Educational Association, which includes more than 150,000 educators serving 1.9 million Catholic school students across the U.S., is supportive of the plan.

A similar plan was considered earlier this year at the state level in Nebraska. That bill ultimately succumbed to filibuster in May.

The Second Vatican Council’s 1965 declaration on Christian education, Gravissimum educationis, said that parents “must enjoy true liberty in their choice of schools.”

“Consequently, the public power, which has the obligation to protect and defend the rights of citizens, must see to it, in its concern for distributive justice, that public subsidies are paid out in such a way that parents are truly free to choose according to their conscience the schools they want for their children.”

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The door of St. Peter’s Chaldean Catholic Cathedral in El Cajon, Ca. / null

Denver Newsroom, Sep 13, 2021 / 16:01 pm (CNA).

There have been at least 95 reported incidents of vandalism of Catholic churches across the United States since May 2020, according to a report by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ Committee for Religious Liberty.

Incidents include arson, the destruction of statues, and the defacement of church buildings and gravestones with swastikas and anti-Catholic language. 

“Whether those who committed these acts were troubled individuals crying out for help or agents of hate seeking to intimidate, the attacks are signs of a society in need of healing,” Archbishop Thomas Wenski of Maimi, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Religious Liberty, and Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City, chairman of the USCCB Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, wrote in a July 2020 statement. 

“In those incidents where human actions are clear, the motives still are not. As we strain to understand the destruction of these holy symbols of selfless love and devotion, we pray for any who have caused it, and we remain vigilant against more of it,” the bishops wrote. 

The latest incident included in the report took place Sept. 5. Vandals graffitied a door and two signs at a Catholic church in Louisville, Colo., about 20 miles northwest of Denver.

Incidents occurred across 29 states.

The report referenced 12 incidents in California since May 2020, including the defacement and removal of a statue of St. Junipero Serra in October 2020, and arson in July 2020 that destroyed parts of a 249-year old mission church in San Gabriel.  

The report also cited 14 incidents in New York, including anti-Catholic and anti-police graffiti on the exterior of Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in January. 

In some cases, dioceses have requested increased security following vandalism.  

The Diocese of Brooklyn requested increased police presence in May, after two incidents of vandalism at church properties in three days. A statue depicting the Blessed Mother holding the infant Jesus was discovered vandalized outside the diocesan administrative offices, with Christ decapitated. A crucifix display outside a parish was also found toppled over, with an American flag outside the rectory burned. Both incidents were investigated as potential hate crimes. 

“We are definitely concerned that there is a pattern of hate crimes against Catholics,” said Msgr. Anthony Hernandez, the moderator of the curia for the diocese, in a statement following the attacks. 

“Our nation finds itself in an extraordinary hour of cultural conflict,” Archbishops Wenski and Coakley wrote. 

“The path forward must be through the compassion and understanding practiced and taught by Jesus and his Holy Mother. Let us contemplate, rather than destroy, images of these examples of God’s love. Following the example of Our Lord, we respond to confusion with understanding and to hatred with love.”

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