Nuns Challenge NY Assisted Suicide Counseling Mandate

Last week, four Orders of Catholic Sisters along with the Catholic Diocese and Bishop of Rockville Centre, New York, filed suit in a New York federal district court challenging, at least as applied to them, the constitutionality of New York's Medical Aid in Dying Act as it interacts with the state's Palliative Care Information Act. Labelling these a "Suicide Counseling Mandate", the 102-page complaint (full text) in Carmelite Sisters for the Aged and Infirm, Inc. v. James, (ND NY, filed 7/17/2026) alleges in part:

Read the rest here.

Union Gospel Mission of Yakima Washington v. Brown

This is a significant religious liberty case that is about to be reviewed (unusually) en banc by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. I strongly suspect this is eventually going to the US Supreme Court. The Washington State law is a pernicious attack on religious freedom and should be struck down, which the the three judge panel did. 

Details here. 

Suing the Pope? An Aggressive Class Action Presents First Amendment Problems

...The class action, O’Connell v. Conference of Catholic Bishops, threatens to violate the Constitution’s church autonomy principle. The lawsuit started several years ago with Peter’s Pence, a special collection that since the Middle Ages has been taken up by the Roman Catholic Church. It goes directly to the papacy to support the projects and activities of the pope. Lead plaintiff David O’Connell donated to the Peter’s Pence collection after being invited to make the offering during Mass. But he now complains that he was misled. He says that he thought that the church was going to use this for charitable purposes, which he understood to be direct aid to the needy. Only later, he says, did he learn that a substantial part of the Peter’s Pence collection went into long-term investments and supported church infrastructure. And so he decided that he would seek the return of his money by bringing a lawsuit, claiming that he was deceived into thinking that his donations supported charity.

The case was filed in federal court seeking the recovery not only of O’Connell’s donations, but all donations from a class of people who also claimed to be confused about the uses to which Peter’s Pence donations would be put. This class action lawsuit was aggressive; it was creative, but the church thought that it had a strong counter-argument: the church autonomy doctrine. If a court is to decide what counts as a charitable contribution, it would have to take positions on matters of church doctrine and governance. It would have to second-guess the internal decision-making of church leadership on how best to utilize the funds of the Roman Catholic Church and of the papacy in particular.

Read the rest here.

9th Circuit: Oregon Right to Life Group Is a Religious Organization

In Oregon Right to Life v. Stolfi, (9th Cir., Oct. 31, 2025), the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, in a 2-1 decision, remanded the case to the district court for it to re-evaluate whether requiring Oregon Right to Life to furnish its employees with health insurance covering abortion and contraception violates its First Amendment rights. The majority said in part:

We agree with ORTL that its beliefs are religious and sincerely held.  In light of the Supreme Court’s recent decision in Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc. v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission, 605 U.S. 238 (2025), which reiterated the constitutional significance of exemptions granted to some religiously motivated organizations but not others, we return this case to the district court to reevaluate whether RHEA’s application to ORTL violates the First Amendment....

ORTL’s religious motivations and beliefs are overt and long-established.  They are announced throughout ORTL’s governing documents, shared by ORTL’s board, and have been publicly declared by ORTL since before this litigation....

Read the rest here. 

Trump Administration to Allow Proselytizing in Federal Work Place

WASHINGTON, July 28 (Reuters) - Federal employees may discuss and promote their religious beliefs in the workplace, the Trump administration said on Monday, citing religious freedoms protected by the U.S. Constitution.

Agency employees may seek to "persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views" in the office, wrote Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management, the U.S. government's human resources agency.

Supervisors can attempt to recruit their employees to their religion, so long as the efforts aren’t “harassing in nature,” according to Kupor's statement. Agencies can't discipline their employees for declining to talk to their coworkers about their religious views.

The statement represents the latest effort of the six-month-old Republican Trump administration to expand the role of religion in the federal workplace.

Read the rest here.

The woke left and religion

We don’t tolerate prejudice at work. Why, pray, do we allow it in church?

HT: Dr. Tighe

All culture warriors are inherently authoritarians. Anyone who thinks they have a right to coercively dictate how other people should live their lives, what they can or cannot say or believe &c, is dangerous and should not be allowed anywhere near political power.

David French on the persecution (or not) of Christians

This June, I was invited on a friend’s podcast to answer a question I’ve been asked over and over again in the Trump era. Are Christians really persecuted in the United States of America? Millions of my fellow evangelicals believe we are, or they believe we’re one election away from a crackdown. This sense of dread and despair helps tie conservative Christians, people who center their lives on the church and the institutions of the church, to Donald Trump — the man they believe will fight to keep faith alive.

As I told my friend, the short answer is no, not by any meaningful historical definition of persecution. American Christians enjoy an immense amount of liberty and power.

But that’s not the only answer. American history tells the story of two competing factions that possess very different visions of the role of faith in American public life. Both of them torment each other, and both of them have made constitutional mistakes that have triggered deep cultural conflict.

One of the most valuable and humbling experiences in life is to experience an American community as part of the in-group and as part of the out-group. I spent most of my life living in the cultural and political center of American evangelical Christianity, but in the past nine years I’ve been relentlessly pushed to the periphery. The process has been painful. Even so, I’m grateful for my new perspective.

When you’re inside evangelicalism, Christian media is full of stories of Christians under threat — of universities discriminating against Christian student groups, of a Catholic foster care agency denied city contracts because of its stance on marriage or of churches that faced discriminatory treatment during Covid, when secular gatherings were often privileged over religious worship.

Combine those stories with the personal tales of Christians who faced death threats, intimidation and online harassment for their views, and it’s easy to tell a story of American backsliding — a nation that once respected or even revered Christianity now persecutes Christians. If the left is angry at conservatives for seeking the protection of a man like Trump, then it has only itself to blame.

Read the rest here.

Religious Liberty in the States

Read the report here. 

On the decapitation of the satanic idol

Rod Dreher: Wokery verging on authoritarianism

Believe it or not, the Trial of the Century just happened in a courtroom in Helsinki. The Finnish parliamentarian and physician Päivi Räsänen this week returned to the dock to face hate crimes charges for having quoted the Bible in defense of Scripture’s teaching on homosexuality.

While it is not altogether surprising that yet another Christian has been brought up on charges of blaspheming against LGBTs—who have been elevated from ordinary people, as equal as anybody else, into liberalism’s divinities—a statement the Finnish prosecution made in the trial’s opening raised the proceedings from an ordinary example of post-Christian liberalism’s contempt for the faith and free speech, into something epochal. Attention must be paid.

In her opening statement on Thursday, the Finnish prosecutor said, of a 2004 pamphlet authored by Dr. Räsänen, “The point isn’t whether it is true or not, but that this is insulting.”

Think about that: The point is not whether these words true or not, but that someone’s feelings were hurt by them.

This is the essence of totalitarianism: the demand to control reality. The Finnish state attempts to outlaw not simply expression it does not like, but facts it finds offensive. This little statement by grim-faced prosecutor Anu Mantila is what makes this two-day legal proceeding the Trial of the Century.

It’s like this: If, in a liberal democracy, the state has the power to declare truth subordinate to ideology, then you live under totalitarianism. It might be a soft totalitarianism—fines for thought criminals like Päivi Räsänen, instead of the gulag—but it is totalitarianism nonetheless.

It is telling that Mantila initially asked the appeals court not to let Dr. Räsänen and her co-defendant, Lutheran bishop Juhana Pohjola, even testify. It was as if she only wanted her allegations heard, with no defense from the accused. The court denied the prosecution’s request, but that it was even made tells you the kind of tyrannical mindset we’re dealing with.

Read the rest here.

HT: Dr. Tighe

Court sides with religious health care workers

A federal judge has issued a permanent injunction on behalf of religious health care providers who feared the Biden administration would interpret the Affordable Care Act as requiring them to perform abortions or gender-transition treatment against their conscience.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services had argued that it doesn't require religious providers to offer such procedures and has never brought or threatened any enforcement activity against a religious entity in such a case.

But U.S. District Court Judge Reed O’Connor interpreted HHS regulations as forcing the plaintiffs — a Catholic hospital system in the Midwest and a Christian medical association — to choose between their beliefs and their livelihood, resulting in “irreparable injury.”

The decision underscores a continued dispute between conservative religious health care providers and HHS over an issue that has generated a patchwork of rulings that will likely have to be sorted out by appellate courts.

Read the rest here.

Supreme Court Backs Catholic Foster Care Agency in Gay Rights Case

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously sided with a Catholic foster care agency that says its religious views prevent it from working with same-sex couples as foster parents. The justices said the city of Philadelphia wrongly limited its relationship with the group as a result of the agency’s policy.

Philadelphia violated the Constitution in limiting its work with the agency, Catholic Social Services, the court said.

“The refusal of Philadelphia to contract with CSS for the provision of foster care services unless it agrees to certify same-sex couples as foster parents cannot survive strict scrutiny, and violates the First Amendment,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.

Roberts said that the group “seeks only an accommodation that will allow it to continue serving the children of Philadelphia in a manner consistent with its religious beliefs; it does not seek to impose those beliefs on anyone else.”

Catholic Social Services is affiliated with the Archdiocese of Philadelphia.

Read the rest here.

FTR I fully expected the court to back the Catholic Church. I did not expect the decision to be unanimous. It may be worth noting that there have been quite a few unanimous, or nearly so, decisions coming out of the court of late. I suspect the justices may be sending a subtle message to those talkig about court packing. 

Supreme Court judges say Obergefell a 'problem' for religious liberty

Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito on Monday said that the Supreme Court’s Obergefell ruling is already posing problems for religious freedom.

“By choosing to privilege a novel constitutional right [to same-sex marriage] over the religious liberty interests explicitly protected in the First Amendment, and by doing so undemocratically, the Court has created a problem that only it can fix,” the justices wrote in an opinion published Monday. 

“Until then, Obergefell will continue to have ‘ruinous consequences for religious liberty,’” they warned. 

In their opinion, which accompanied the Court’s denial of a writ of certiorari in the case Davis v. Ermold, Thomas and Alito said that the 2015 landmark decision pitted same-sex marrriage against religious liberty.

In the case of former county clerk Kim Davis of Kentucky, who in 2015 made headlines for refusing to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, Thomas and Alito joined the court in denying her petition for a writ of certiorari, or a review of her case, on the first day of the court’s fall term.

Davis was sued for not issuing marriage licenses after the Obergefell ruling declared a right to same-sex marriage. The Sixth Circuit appeals court in 2019 ruled that she was not protected from qualified immunity, and thus could be held personally liable for infringing on the constitutional rights to marriage of same-sex couples.

In a statement accompanying the denial of certiorari, Alito and Thomas said Davis’ petition “does not cleanly present” the issues at hand in the Obergefell ruling. However, they sharply criticized the 2015 ruling for posing serious and unnecessary challenges to those religiously believing marriage is between one man and one woman.

Read the rest here. 

HT: Dr. Tighe

Navy cancels Catholic Masses at area (San Diego) bases- other religious services continue

 SAN DIEGO —  Catholic Masses at San Diego-area Navy bases have ended because the Navy, in what it says is a cost-cutting move, has declined to renew its contracts with Catholic priests, and there are not enough Catholic chaplains on active duty to fill the void.

Protestant services on bases, which are led by active duty chaplains, will continue, said Brian O’Rourke, a Navy Region Southwest spokesman.

The changes to the Navy’s religious ministries are part of a national realignment announced on Aug. 20. It is unclear how many priests this will affect.

“The Navy’s religious ministries priority is reaching and ministering to our largest demographic — active duty Sailors and Marines in the 18-25 year-old range,” O’Rourke wrote in an email. “To meet that mission, the Navy has had to make the difficult decision to discontinue most contracted ministry services.”

In the Navy message announcing the change, Vice Adm. Yancey Lindsey, the commander of Naval Installations Command, said it differently.

“We have a responsibility to use our limited resources wisely in meeting the needs of our personnel,” wrote Lindsey. “Therefore, we will reduce redundancies and capture efficiencies by realigning resources,” noting that religious services will be cut at bases where those services are readily available in the surrounding community outside the base.

Read the rest here. 

HT: The Deacon's Bench

LA launches retaliatory eviction against church lead by John MacArthur

 Outrageous. The church should sue LA and seek punitive damages for what is a naked abuse of power.

South African Court Invalidates Dutch Reformed Church's LGBT Policy

In South Africa, a 3-judge panel of the North Gauteng High Court set aside as unlawful and invalid a decision on same-sex relationships made by the General Synod of the Dutch Reformed Church during the Synod's November 2016 meeting. That decision reversed a 2015 policy that recognized same-sex civil unions and allowed the ordination of gays and lesbians.  In Gaum v. Van Rensburg, S.A. High Ct., March 8, 2019), the court said in part:

The Church denied that the 2016 decision prevents the participation of the LGBTQIA+ community in the church community, or that it impedes their private lives, or that the decision violates their constitutional rights.... On behalf of the Church it was submitted that the 2016 decision did not restrict Gaum’s right to freedom of association; Gaum is free to join another Church that interprets the Bible in the way that Gaum does....

The differentiation caused by the 2016 decision does inherently diminish the dignity of Gaum because same-sex relationships are tainted as being unworthy of mainstream church ceremonies and persons in a same-sex relationship cannot be a Minister in the Church....

There is an argument to be made that a Court cannot prescribe who must be appointed as a Minister in a Church. But, if a member of the Church is permitted to study to become a Minister in that Church, but disallowed to engage in his or her profession only due to the fact that he or she would be in same sex relationship there is an inherent contradiction in the conduct of the Church....

The threshold requirement in section 36 of the Constitution is that any limitation of a fundamental right must be “law of general application …” Where a church discriminates, it constitutes private discrimination, with the law of general application not likely to apply.

eNCA reports on the decision.

Source.

Those who reject transgenderism banned from adoption, working with children in Illinois

June 1, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) — The Illinois Department of Children and Family Services has instituted sweeping changes to its policies and procedures in caring for children who experience gender dysphoria that essentially weed out all employees and volunteers who cannot in good conscience support and promote transgender ideology.   

Illinois now "requires that all LGBTQ children and youth be placed in an affirming safe housing, receive LGBTQ competent medical and mental health services, and have equal opportunity and access to care."

However, in order to assure consistent achievement of that goal, the new policy requires "any person who is involved with DCFS children/youth will complete mandatory training in LGBTQ competency." This will be an integral part of DCFS core training and will be a requirement to attaining a child-welfare license.  

Read the rest here.

A Rare Win for Religious Liberty in Canada

An appeals court in Canada has ruled that an evangelical Christian law school cannot be denied accreditation because it officially opposes homosexuality.

A five-judge panel from the British Columbia Court of Appeal ruled Tuesday that denying Trinity Western University's law school accreditation was a religious liberty violation.

In a unanimous decision, the five judges concluded that the Law Society of British Columbia was "unreasonable" in denying accreditation to TWU for its position against homosexuality.

"In our view, the detrimental impact of the Law Society decision on TWU's right to religious freedom is severe. The legal education of TWU graduates would not be recognized by the Law Society and they could not apply to practise law in this province. TWU's religious freedom rights as an institution are also significantly impacted by the decision," concluded the Court of Appeal.
 
A Canadian-based Christian university, TWU has found itself in legal battles in multiple Canadian provinces over its theologically conservative stance on sexual ethics.

At specific issue is the university's Community Covenant, which requires students and faculty to "voluntarily abstain" from "sexual intimacy that violates the sacredness of marriage between a man and a woman."

Read the rest here.

Archbishop Chaput: About Those Unthinking, Backward Catholics

Back in 2008, in the weeks leading up to the Obama-McCain presidential election, two young men visited me in Denver.  They were from Catholics United, a group describing itself as committed to social justice issues.  They voiced great concern at the manipulative skill of Catholic agents for the Republican Party.  And they hoped my brother bishops and I would resist identifying the Church with single-issue and partisan (read: abortion) politics.

It was an interesting experience.  Both men were obvious flacks for the Obama campaign and the Democratic Party — creatures of a political machine, not men of the Church; less concerned with Catholic teaching than with its influence.  And presumably (for them) bishops were dumb enough to be used as tools, or at least prevented from helping the other side.  Yet these two young men not only equaled but surpassed their Republican cousins in the talents of servile partisan hustling.  Thanks to their work, and activists like them, American Catholics helped to elect an administration that has been the most stubbornly unfriendly to religious believers, institutions, concerns and liberty in generations.

I never saw either young man again.  The cultural damage done by the current White House has – apparently — made courting America’s bishops unnecessary.

But bad can always get worse.  I’m thinking, of course, of the contemptuously anti-Catholic emails exchanged among members of the Clinton Democratic presidential campaign team and released this week by WikiLeaks. A sample:  Sandy Newman, president of Voices for Progress, emailed John Podesta, now the head of Hillary Clinton’s campaign, to ask about whether “the bishops opposing contraceptive coverage” could be the tinder for a revolution. “There needs to be a Catholic Spring, in which Catholics themselves demand the end of a middle ages [sic] dictatorship,” Newman writes.

Of course, Newman added, “this idea may just reveal my total lack of understanding of the Catholic church, the economic power it can bring to bear against nuns and priests who count on it for their maintenance.” Still, he wondered, how would one “plant the seeds of a revolution”? John Podesta replied that “We created Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good to organize for a moment like this . . . likewise Catholics United” (emphasis added).

Another Clinton-related email, from John Halpin of the Center for American Progress, mocks Catholics in the so-called conservative movement, especially converts: “They must be attracted to the systematic thought and severely backwards gender relations and must be totally unaware of Christian democracy.” In a follow-up, he adds “They can throw around ‘Thomistic’ thought and ‘subsidiarity’ and sound sophisticated because no one knows what . . . they’re talking about.”

On the evening these WikiLeaks emails were released, I received the following angry email myself, this one from a nationally respected (non-Catholic) attorney experienced in Church-state affairs:

“I was deeply offended by the [Clinton team] emails, which are some of the worst bigotry by a political machine I have seen.  [A] Church has an absolute right to protect itself when under attack as a faith and Church by civil political forces. That certainly applies here . . .

 “Over the last eight years there has been strong evidence that the current administration, with which these people share values, has been very hostile to religious organizations.  Now there is clear proof that this approach is deliberate and will accelerate if these actors have any continuing, let alone louder, say in government. 

 “These bigots are actively strategizing how to shape Catholicism not to be Catholic or consistent with Jesus’ teachings, but to be the ‘religion’ they want.  They are, at the very core, trying to turn religion to their secular view of right and wrong consistent with their politics.  This is fundamentally why the Founders left England and demanded that government not have any voice in religion.  Look where we are now.  We have political actors trying to orchestrate a coup to destroy Catholic values, and they even analogize their takeover to a coup in the Middle East, which amplifies their bigotry and hatred of the Church.  I had hoped I would never see this day — a day like so many dark days in Eastern Europe that led to the death of my [Protestant minister] great grandfather at the hands of communists who also hated and wanted to destroy religion.”

Of course it would be wonderful for the Clinton campaign to repudiate the content of these ugly WikiLeaks emails. All of us backward-thinking Catholics who actually believe what Scripture and the Church teach would be so very grateful.

In the meantime, a friend describes the choice facing voters in November this way: A vulgar, boorish lout and disrespecter of women, with a serious impulse control problem; or a scheming, robotic liar with a lifelong appetite for power and an entourage riddled with anti-Catholic bigots.

In a nation where “choice” is now the unofficial state religion, the menu for dinner is remarkably small.

Source (Reposted in its entirety with permission)

Civil Rights Commission: ‘Religious Liberty,’ ‘Religious Freedom’ Code Words for Bigotry

A new report by the United States Commission on Civil Rights supports the majority on the federal commission, who say that efforts to protect religious liberty and freedom are really a way for individuals and entities to discriminate against people who don’t share their beliefs.

“The phrases ‘religious liberty’ and ‘religious freedom’ will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy or any form of intolerance,” Martin Castro, chairman of the commission, said in a statement included in the 296-page report.

“Religious liberty was never intended to give one religion dominion over other religions, or a veto power over the civil rights and civil liberties of others,” Castro said. “However, today, as in the past, religion is being used as both a weapon and a shield by those seeking to deny others equality.

“In our nation’s past religion has been used to justify slavery and later, Jim Crow laws,” Castro said. “We now see ‘religious liberty’ arguments sneaking their way back into our political and constitutional discourse (just like the concept of ‘state rights’) in an effort to undermine the rights of some Americans.

“This generation of Americans must stand up and speak out to ensure that religion never again be twisted to deny others the full promise of America,” Castro said.

Read the rest here.