U.S. attorney-general announces 'religious liberty taskforce'
Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced on July 30 that the Department of Justice is creating a "religious liberty task force".
The announcement came during the department's religious liberty summit. Sessions said the cultural climate in this country - and in the West more generally - has become less hospitable to people of faith in recent years, and as a result many Americans have felt their freedom to practise their faith has been under attack.
"We've seen nuns ordered to buy contraceptives. We've seen U.S. senators ask judicial and executive branch nominees about dogma - even though the Constitution explicitly forbids a religious test for public office. We've all seen the ordeal faced so bravely by Jack Phillips," he said, referring to the Colorado baker who took his case to the Supreme Court after he was found to have violated the state's anti-discrimination laws for refusing to make a cake for a same-sex wedding.
Sessions said the guidance he issued in October lays out
20 fundamental principles for the executive branch to follow,
including the principles that free exercise means a right to act
- or to abstain from action - and that government shouldn't
impugn people's motives or beliefs. "In short, we have not only
the freedom to worship-but the right to exercise our faith. The
Constitution's protections don't end at the parish parking lot
nor can our freedoms be confined to our basements," he said,
according to his prepared remarks.
Extract from Lydia Wheeler in The Hill (USA), July 30, 2018.
Don't be duped into legalising 'medicinal' marijuana
Once legalisation is achieved, you will hear much, much less about the alleged medical uses of cannabis. These were only ever advanced as propaganda for the drug.
I spent a lot of time last week trying to discover the facts of the Caldwell case. My sympathy for Charlotte and Billy remains undimmed. But I can tell you that I quickly found that this mother and child are surrounded by a high wall of spokesmen, professional PR men, sympathisers and advisers, including one very rich man who has engaged in public campaigns to legalise marijuana for general use.
Friendly at first, these sympathisers quickly identified that I was not an ally in their cause, which in my view goes way beyond the plight of Charlotte and Billy Caldwell. One simply refused to answer factual questions. One mysteriously stopped taking my phone calls at all. Another brushed me off with a snotty email. Others just fell silent.
The next day I received a gruff and suspicious dismissal from
a source I had never even contacted in the first place, claiming
Ms Caldwell was "very upset by this line of questioning".
Extract from Peter Hitchens in The Mail on Sunday (UK),
June 24, 2018.
Smartphones are destroying your teen daughter
A couple of years ago, I wrote a column titled "The horror stories are real - don't give your children a smartphone". I explained how smartphones are transforming the world teenagers live in, creating a virtual universe impervious to parents and guardians - a universe created and accessed by the smartphones that are now present in the hands of nearly every girl and boy, at a younger and younger age.
But for some reason, time and again, I find that many parents just don't seem to get it. They can attend conferences where the brutal reality of sexting is laid out, replete with heartbreaking stories of nude selfies from girls sent to boys in a moment of bad judgement being passed around the school - resulting in humiliation, self-harm, and sometimes, horribly, suicide.
And many parents will respond: But my daughter or my son
won't get involved in that sort of thing. I've had parents say this
to me when I know, because I talked to their son or daughter,
that their children have been involved in this sort of thing.
Parents often do not understand the massive pressures teenagers
are under to engage in this sort of behavior, using a device that
gives them access to a world that simply did not exist when their
parents were young. Many parents also seem convinced, despite
all statistical evidence to the contrary, that their children will not
look at pornography as long as they have a good talk with them
once or twice.
Extract from Jonathon Van Maren in The Bridgehead
(Canada), July 6, 2018.
No safe havens for Christians?
What you can do - what you must do - is to prepare yourself and your children for the world that's coming at us fast. Stop the denial. Just stop it. Stop lying to yourself that this is a political problem that can be solved through politics. It's far beyond that.
There are no safe places to which we can escape. We are going to have to build the Resistance where we are, starting in our own hearts and minds, expanding out to our families, and to our small communities. Because the challenge is total, so too must the Resistance be.
We Christians are right here, right now, learning what it
means to be a Christian in a post-Christian civilization.
Extract from Rod Dreher in The American Conservative,
June 26, 2018.
Poland and the future of Europe
Walking about the Old Town [of the city of Wroclaw], I felt I had been transported into a parallel Europe in which Christendom had been buttressed, rather than dethroned, by modernity. Groups of nuns (both old and young) were a not uncommon sight on the streets and in restaurants, walking about in traditional habits. Priests in cassocks sat in cafes and rode the bus. Strangers greeted each other in shops and pubs with "Szczesc Boze!" (God bless!). Public squares were filled with young couples and children.
How different this felt from the cathedral towns of France and
Germany, where once-great abbeys now stand empty, waiting
to be dismantled for lack of vocations. How distinct from the
streets of London, where clergy have for years been advised
against wearing habits for fear of assault and harassment. The
peaceful city was far removed, too, from the streets of Paris and
Berlin, where throngs of police stand at the ready in anticipation
of Islamist attacks.
Extract from Jozef Andrew Kosc in First Things (New York),
June 14, 2018. 