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The debacle in Ceuto showed the absurdity of liberal rhetoric on immigration. Our bishops, seeing the flood of immigrants, ask only: “How can we help them?” That’s only one of three crucial questions. The others are: Why are they here? and What do they want? In the case of Ceuto, one perceptive observer wrote, “A border crossing celebrated as a victory implies that the authority of the receiving state has been defeated.”
When a state official demands a change in church policies, ordinarily that’s a threat to religious freedom. But in Florida an unusual conflict has arisen: the attorney general (who is Catholic) is defending the Church’s teaching on religious freedom; the bishops are resisting.
This week on the Home Front:
Along with freedom of speech and freedom of religion, the First Amendment guarantees the right to “peaceable assembly.” If you can’t meet with like-minded friends and neighbors, your freedom to speak and to worship is badly degraded. Yet the right to assemble was taken from us (well, most of us), without debate and mostly without protest, during the Covid lockdown.
And speaking of religious freedom, Leila and I also discuss the bizarre situation in Florida, where the bishops are refusing to allow religious exemptions to a vaccine mandate in parochial schools— even though the Vatican teaches that vaccination must be voluntary.
In case you missed it, a quick summary of the arguments in the Florida religious-freedom dispute.
You’ve probably seen stories about what Pope Leo plans to do regarding the Traditional Latin Mass. All those stories are speculative; we still don’t know. But it’s pretty clear that powerful Vatican officials are pressing hard to keep Traditionis Custodes intact. That could mean they fear the Pope is contemplating a change.
Leila opened her campaign for recognition that the right to peaceable assembly is fundamental to other First-Amendment rights. It’s frightening that right was taken away during the Covid lockdown; we can’t let it happen again.
Federal officials are taking action against an organ-procurement agency charged with multiple abuses— which were overlooked during the Biden presidency. Further evidence of the moral dangers involved in the business of organ transplants.
APSA, the Vatican’s asset-management agency, reports a large increase in the value of the Vatican’s real-estate portfolio. But that increase is due in large part to new accounting procedures, which result in a large decline in this year’s profits— and therefore in the amount APSA can help with the yawning Vatican budget deficit.
Cardinal Sarah says: “Synodality is an abstract term, untranslatable into our African languages.” Not just African languages.
In Australia, one Catholic bishop has testified for the prosecution in the sex-abuse trial of another bishop. This has never happened before. Think about what that means. Do you believe that there has never been a case in which one bishop knew of another’s abuses? You know, the way “nobody knew” about McCarrick?
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