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From NOLA.com: The Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge has issued a statement decrying a decision by the Louisiana Supreme Court that could compel a local priest to testify in court about confessions he might have received. The alleged confessions, according to legal documents, were made to the priest by a minor girl regarding possible sexual abuse perpetrated by another church parishioner.The statement, published Monday (July 7) on the diocese’s website, said forcing such testimony “attacks the seal of confession,” a sacrament that “cuts to the core of the Catholic faith.”The statement refers to a lawsuit naming the Rev. Jeff Bayhi...

Many observers misunderstood the Hobby Lobby dispute and others like it as a First Amendment case, but it wasn’t. It primarily related to the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), with an indirect reference to the constitutional freedom of religious expression. A case in Louisiana may be the real McCoy, though. The Louisiana Supreme Court has ruled that a priest must testify in a case about what he heard in a confessional — an order that would result in automatic excommunication and damnation, according to the doctrine and canon law of the Catholic Church: The state high court’s decision, rendered...

The Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge has issued a statement decrying a decision by the Louisiana Supreme Court that could compel a local priest to testify in court about confessions he might have received. The alleged confessions, according to legal documents, were made to the priest by a minor girl regarding possible sexual abuse perpetrated by another church parishioner. The statement, published Monday (July 7) on the diocese's website, said forcing such testimony "attacks the seal of confession," a sacrament that "cuts to the core of the Catholic faith." The statement refers to a lawsuit naming the Rev. Jeff Bayhi...

 In a previous post concerning the topic of human trafficking and the political left’s seeming lack of interest in it, The Motley Monk observed: This iteration of the global war on human trafficking is doomed to failure. Fueled by their hearts and not by their minds, the very people who decry human trafficking can’t seem to figure out whose policies sent an open invitation for human traffickers to practice their trade in the left’s own front yard…at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. With that in mind, The Motley Monk overheard U.S. Representative Louis Gohmert (R-TX) state on Saturday’s “Fox and Firends”...

As a faithful Catholic with moral objections to forced Christian complicity in both abortion and contraception, I had many reasons to rejoice in the Supreme CourtÂ’s majority decision in Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby written by Justice Alito. Unfortunately, the CourtÂ’s reasoning was not one of them. Two premises in the majorityÂ’s argument were especially troubling: first, the CourtÂ’s assertion of the legal inscrutability of moral and religious beliefs, and second, its assumption of the GovernmentÂ’s claim that contraceptives and abortifacients are necessary for womenÂ’s health and well-being. Contrary to the first premise, I agree with dissenting Justice Ginsburg that...

The development of education was job one when Coadjutor Bishop John Joseph Hughes came to New York in 1837. As one expert explains:  eight makeshift parochial schools, meeting in church basements or rented halls, had on register about 5000 Catholic children. An additional 7000 either lacked accommodation or made no effort to go to school.  Public aid had been given to some of these basement schools by the Free School Society, but in 1825, when it became the Public School Society, funding for denominational schools (Catholic and Baptist) ceased. The Society wasn’t unwilling to educate Catholic children; it just intended...

The arguments in favor of same-sex civil marriage are well known. Thrown into the ring are the buzzwords of “equality” and “discrimination”. So the typical argument goes: Discrimination is bad, and equality is good, so our government should give homosexual couples the recognition and subsidies reserved for heterosexual couples. But there are problems with those. For one thing, discrimination and prejudice are innate to our psyche. If I have a soccer ball, for example, I will only intend to use it for soccer, because that is its purpose. Since I refuse to use it for basketball, does that mean I...

Was the faith of the Founding Fathers deism or Christianity? What does the answer mean for us today? Both the secularists and the Christians have missed the mark.There's been a lot of rustle in the press lately--and in many Christian publications--about the faith of the Founding Fathers and the status of the United States as a "Christian nation." Home schooling texts abound with references to our religious heritage, and entire organizations are dedicated to returning America to its spiritual roots. On the other side, secularists cry "foul" and parade their own list of notables among our country's patriarchs. They...

“Oh no!”, they rush to exclaim, “We’re all about freedom! Freedom for you and for me and for… everyone! Even Catholics! We’ll never force you to marry homosexuals.”First, never accept the premise that the same-sex “marriage” issue is a matter of civil rights. It. Is. Not. In the same way that feminists have gotten everyone to believe abortion is a “women’s issue”, (It. Is. Not.), homsexualists have gotten everyone to believe same-sex “marriage” is a civil-rights issue.This from The Telegraph: Gay Danish couples win right to marry in church [a Lutheran church, btw ... the state church of Denmark] Homosexual...

Who is afraid of a rising Middle East Khilafa, the Arabic word for Caliphate? Lots. Muslims like Shia, Kurds, most Sufis, Alawis, sundry Arab secularists. And Arab Christians of course. All fearing their lives, women, sacred buildings and properties being treated as war loot. Western leaders too are shaking in their boots: good! A nemesis is unfolding. A sort of retributive justice, maybe of divine origins. A paying back for the 2003 illegal, unjustified aggression on Iraq. Engineered by the two scoundrels, Bush and Blair. But the roots of evil reach far back. To WWI, the catastrophic, suicidal, mad all-European...

Making “black masses” open to the public exposes people to serious evil, an exorcist warned this week in the wake of news that a satanic church plans to stage the ritual in a public venue in Oklahoma City. “You cannot attend such an event—even if one does so merely out of curiosity, and not with any firm desire to worship Satan—without being adversely affected,” the exorcist cautioned, in an exclusive interview with Aleteia. “The mere fact that this black mass in Oklahoma City will be public lends it a certain legitimacy, and I suspect that some people will go...

The pressure will now rise, since Anglicans have betrayed Christian tradition and history (again).Never mind that the Church of England has cobbled up a rite of baptism that omits any reference to the Devil (HERE), now we have this from CNW: Anglicans in Australia abandon seal of confession for serious crimesAnglican leaders in Australia have unanimously approved a proposal to abandon the confessional seal, authorizing priests to disclose information about serious crimes such as sexual abuse.The General Synod in Australia, meeting on July 2, passed an amendment to the Anglican canon on confessional secrecy. The change must now be approved...

CAMPOBASSO, Italy — Pope Francis says abandoning the traditionally Christian practice of not working on Sundays isn’t such a good change. Francis on Saturday traveled to Molise, an agricultural region in the heart of southern Italy where unemployment is chronically high. While he said poor people need employment to have dignity, he disagreed with opening stores and other businesses on Sundays as a way to create jobs.m

Sudanese Christian mother Meriam Ibrahim is facing a new lawsuit after her Islamic relatives submitted a case on Thursday trying to prove that she is a Muslim, which would make her marriage to a Christian man illegal under Islamic Shariah Law. The lawsuit could further delay Ibrahim's hopes to travel with her husband and children to the U.S. and seek refuge. Abdel Rahman Malek, the lawyer hired by Ibrahim's Muslim family, said that the Khartoum Religious Court will be reviewing their case "asking to prove that Meriam Ibrahim belongs to her (Muslim) father and family," according to Reuters. The 27-year-old...

Everyone has a church and everyone has an understanding of the marks of the church, of what makes their church the true church. For the Roman Catholic, the mark of the church is the pope. In his mind, if you don't have the pope, then you don't have the church as God instituted it. And so a faithful Catholic would get furious if his priest rejected papal supremacy, because doing so would stop the church in his midst from being what the church is and doing what it should do. For the Lutheran, the marks of the church are the...

After losing a copyright infringement lawsuit to prevent the posting of videos alleging contradictions in different versions of his once famous “Jihad to Jesus” testimony, a Georgia Baptist college president now must pay more than $34,000 in attorney fees, a federal judge ruled July 1. U.S. District Judge Norman Moon in Lynchburg, Va., said he believes Brewton-Parker College President Ergun Caner’s lawsuit filed against two bloggers in 2013 was intended to silence critics and not a legitimate copyright claim. Caner filed a lawsuit in Texas in June 2013 followed by an amended complaint four months later seeking a permanent injunction...

“We are subject to the men who rule over us, but subject only in the Lord. If they command anything against him, let us not pay the least regard to it.” Book Four, Calvin’s Institutes “I fix all the blame of these extraordinary proceedings upon the Presbyterians.” So one colonist loyal to King George wrote to friends in England. Around the same time, Horace Walpole spoke from the English House of Commons to report on these “extraordinary proceedings” in the colonies of the new world. “There is no good crying about the matter,” he said. “Cousin America has run off...

In the days following a Supreme Court ruling upholding religious freedom in the workplace, several lower courts have issued decisions protecting religious liberty in similar circumstances. Several new injunctions issued since the Supreme Court’s ruling on Hobby Lobby’s case “show that the HHS Mandate is on its last legs when it comes to religious non-profits,” said Lori Windham, senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, which is defending many of those challenging the controversial mandate. “The sad part is that it has taken almost three years of litigation to get to a result the Administration should have supported...

I asked the middle-aged man across from me, “Who was the last good American president?” It was the year 2000. As a 19-year old college journalist studying history and political science, I was eager to know my drinking partner’s response to this question. He had just finished railing against Presidents Clinton, Reagan and Bush '41. At this point, I was wondering if he liked any U.S. president at all. To my surprise, I didn’t have long to wait for an answer. Without hesitation, Christopher Hitchens leaned across the table, looked me in the eye, and quipped with boozy conviction: “Eisenhower.”...

Christian right's plan is simple: Dominate courts, state legislatures, and push their twisted morality on all of us. “If fascism comes to America, it will not be identified with any “shirt” movement, nor with an “insignia,” but it will probably be “wrapped up in the flag and heralded as a plea for liberty and preservation of the constitution,” wrote in a 1936 issue of The Christian Century. Nobel Laureate recipient Sinclair Lewis put it even more succinctly when he warned, “It [fascism] would come wrapped in the flag and whistling the Star Spangled Banner.” No one who has followed the...