After legal setback, teen girls fighting courts and woke editors

After legal setback, teen girls fighting courts and woke editors: The battle to stop biological males from competing against female athletes is not over despite a legal setback, vows an attorney representing four female clients who sued their state athletic association.

Faith On Trial, Thursday May 27

Dr. Matthew Bunson, executive editor of EWTN News on the upcoming spring assembly of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a possible debate about distributing communion to pro-abortion Catholic politicians. Denise Harle, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom on the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization concerning a Mississippi law that limits abortions after 15 weeks of gestational age.

This Thursday (5-27) on Faith On Trial

Guests: Dr. Matthew Bunson, executive editor of EWTN News on the upcoming spring assembly of the U. S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and a possible debate about distributing communion to pro-abortion Catholic politicians.

Denise Harle, senior counsel with the Alliance Defending Freedom on the Supreme Court’s decision to hear the case of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization concerning a Mississippi law that limits abortions after 15 weeks of gestational age.

Faith On Trial airs this and every Thursday at 10 a.m. Central on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM; 88.5 & 94.5 FM, and streaming live on our website (www.iowacatholicradio.com) where you can listen to previous programs and download our free and convenient app.  

The Holy Ghost Is Allowed In Courtrooms … And Other Cases Of Note . . .

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – My December column, the last I wrote for the year before COVID took me out of circulation for about eight weeks, was about a case in which a juror was removed from deliberations in a criminal case involving a former congresswoman, Corrine Brown. It seems that the judge removed the juror for guidance the juror said he was receiving from the Holy Ghost.

As you might recall, during the second day of deliberations, one of the jurors sent a note to the judge expressing concern about the comments a fellow juror had made. The complaining juror was called into chambers and asked for further information. She told the judge that one juror had made a comment that he was praying for guidance and trusted the Holy Ghost who, apparently, told the man that the defendant, Corrine Brown, was not guilty on all of the twenty-two counts in the indictment.

The judge then called the “offending juror” into chambers and questioned him. The juror told the judge that he had told the other jurors “in listening to all the information, taking it all down, I listen for the truth, and I know the truth when the truth is spoken,” and that “I prayed about this, I have looked at the information, and that I receive information as to what I was told to do in relation to what I heard here.”

After a long colloquy with the juror, during which the juror told the judge that he was following the judge’s instructions, and both jurors had stated that all jurors were engaged in good faith deliberations, the government moved to strike the juror, which the judge did. He was replaced by an alternate, jury deliberations continued for another day, when the jury found the defendant guilty on eighteen counts, and not guilty on four.

Brown appealed the decision asking the court for a new trial over the issue of the juror’s disqualification. The trial court and a panel of the Eleventh Circuit rejected the defense argument, but the entire circuit agreed to hear the appeal en banc, that is, with all the judges of the circuit court.

On May 6, 2021, the National Day of Prayer, the full court vacated Brown’s convictions and remanded the case for a new trial, holding that the removal of the juror was improper and violated the defendant’s right under the Sixth Amendment to a unanimous jury verdict.

Circuit Chief Justice William Pryor, writing for the majority, said that a trial judge may remove a juror after deliberations had begun only upon a finding of “good cause,” which exists when it is found that the juror refuses to apply the law or to follow the court’s instructions. “So, for a district judge to find that this standard of proof is satisfied, he must determine ‘with utmost certainty’ that a juror has refused to base his verdict on the law as instructed and the evidence admitted at trial.”

He noted that in the juror’s interview with the court, he never gave any indication that he was refusing to consider the evidence or follow the law. “The district judge was wrong to conclude that [the juror’s] statements that he received guidance in response to prayers were categorically a bridge too far.”

And: “[The juror’s] vernacular that the Holy Spirit ‘told’ him Brown was ‘not guilty on all charges’ was no more disqualifying by itself than a secular juror’s statement that his conscience or gut ‘told’ him the same. Of course, neither a religious nor a secular juror may convict or acquit a defendant using his internal decision-making processes without regard to the evidence. But [the juror] repeatedly explained that he was, in fact, reviewing and deliberating over the evidence.”

Former Solicitor General Paul Clement had written in a brief supporting Brown: “A nation that enshrines religious toleration in its founding document and invokes the religious beliefs of its citizenry to reinforce their public oaths cannot dismiss jurors based on the way they express their religious convictions.”

And Lea Patterson, counsel for First Liberty, released a statement saying: “We are grateful that the court reaffirmed the strong standard required to dismiss a deliberating juror. No American should be disqualified from fulfilling their civic duty as jurors simply because they believe that God answers prayer.”

A couple of other cases with satisfactory results:

In Indianapolis the archdiocese was being sued by a former Catholic high school teacher after he was dismissed for entering into a same-sex union in violation of the terms of his teaching contract and Church teaching. “If the First Amendment means anything, it means the government can’t punish the Catholic Church for asking Catholic educators to support Catholic teaching,” said Luke Goodrich, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, which represented the archdiocese. (See The Wanderer, May 20, 2021, p. 3A.)

The trial court initially ruled that the case against the archdiocese could move forward, but the archdiocese appealed that ruling, citing the school’s handbook that requires teachers to “Support the teachings and traditions of the Roman Catholic Church . . . [and] serve as a role model for Christ-centered lifestyle,” and incorporates a morals clause which states that “teachers, as leaders in a ministry of the Catholic Church . . . must be credible witnesses of the Catholic faith,” and “models of Christian values.”

The Indiana Supreme Court sent the case back to the trial court with instructions to reconsider. The court then threw out the suit, vindicating the Church’s constitutional right to set religious standards for its schools.

In Minnesota the governor, Tim Walz, on May 5 agreed to settle a suit with two Christian churches — Northland Baptist Church and Living Word Christian Center — over COVID restrictions. The churches claimed that the state had placed restrictions on the churches that were more severe than those imposed on other businesses. When the state filed and lost a motion to dismiss the suit, it decided to settle and entered into an agreement that future emergency orders can no longer discriminate against churches on capacity limits. The churches were represented by the Upper Midwest Law Center which described the settlement as a “big win.”

In the pending category, the Milwaukee Archdiocese has sued the state’s Department of Corrections over a policy that prevents clergy from visiting prisoners. The archdiocese complained that for over a year corrections employees such as psychologists, social workers, and outside attorneys have been allowed to visit with prisoners as long as they followed proper health guidelines. However, those protocols do not apply to clergy.

A conservative legal group, the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL), filed the suit. “There is no rational connection between the DOC’s policy and its interest in combatting COVID-19 given that the DOC allows social workers and lawyers entrance from outside of facilities, for example, but not clergy,” WILL wrote to the department.

The state “must act now to restore the rights of Wisconsin’s inmates to freely exercise their religion,” the letter argued.

This one is just getting started. We’ll watch for developments.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com, and listen to him every Thursday at 10 a.m. Central Time, on Faith On Trial, on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)

 

Former Satanist tells his story

Last night at my parish, St. Augustin, Mr. Zachary King, former High Wizard of the Church of Satin, spoke about his life as a Satanist and his conversion to the Catholic Church. The tape was running for some time before the program bagan, so slide the "time" bar forward to 20 to begin.

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Religion Clause: 9th Circuit: Denial of Invocation Spot To Satanic ...:  In The Satanic Temple, Inc. v. City of Scottsdale ,  (9th Cir., May 19, 2021), the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed an Arizona fe...

Faith On Trial program this week (5-20-21): All about Mary with Msgr. Arthur B. Calkins

Special edition of Faith On Trial this Thursday (5-20)

This week for the Marian Month of May our guest is Msgr. Arthur B. Calkins a veteran of 21 years in Vatican service developing dogma, and dealing with all things Mary. Don’t miss this special programing, Thursday, May 20, 10 a.m. (Central) on Iowa Catholic Radio 1150 AM; 88.5 & 94.5 FM and streaming on our website, IowaCatholicRadio.com, where you can listen to programs you may have missed. This is a one-time special edition of the Mariology of the Catholic Church.

You can order a copy of Msgr. Calkins’ book, Totus Tuus: Pope Saint John Paul II’ Program of Marian Consecrations and Entrustments, as well as many of our other author-guests, by clicking the link in the right hand column of this page. 

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition: Ontario euthanasia deaths increase, inspite of COV...

Euthanasia Prevention Coalition: Ontario euthanasia deaths increase, inspite of COV...: Alex Schadenberg Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition The April 2021 (MAiD) euthanasia data for Ontario indicates that even t...

Deacon Mike's homily for the Ascension

Ascension Sunday – May 16, 2021 Cycle B

Readings: Acts 1:1-11; Ephesians 1:17-23; Mark 16:15-20

Good morning …

            Today we celebrate the feast of Ascension, formally Ascension Thursday – once a holy day of obligation, but today most dioceses have transferred the celebration of the Ascension from last Thursday to today. In those dioceses the Ascension was celebrated on Thursday, today’s readings would be the Seventh Sunday after Easter. And in the traditional Latin Mass, this is the Sunday after the Ascension. So depending on where you attend Mass this weekend, the reading could differ.

            But no matter what readings you hear, the theme all centers around the message Jesus left for his followers.

            Even without the readings I think we all know what the Ascension was, I know I was taught about it by the good nuns at St. Theresia’s just a few short years ago. I know I miss those old nuns – we never quite appreciated them at the time – BVMs, remember: Black Veiled Monsters. They always came armed, with a yardstick or something to intimidate us with, but oh how they are missed today. They made sure you learned that old Baltimore Catechism and I don’t really remember them using those yardsticks, apparently their only use was to send a message.

            Anyway, the story is simple: Jesus goes to the mountain with his disciples where he gives them a final blessing and a final charge: “Go into the whole world and proclaim the good news to the whole of creation.” He also makes them a final promise: He will send the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, to accompany them, to give them the “spirit of truth” to testify for him.

            But he also has a final warning for them. A warning he’s been repeating for some time: You don’t belong to this world. If you did the world would love you, but because you don’t it will hate you, as it hated me first.

            Then he goes off to the Father and while the disciples are still looking up two angles appear asking, “Why are you just looking at the sky?” In other words, Get off your duff and get ready for the Advocate to prepare you and go to work.

            Now that’s pretty simple. In fact, it’s a very nice story. But it comes to us with some baggage, some things that should concern us. While we know the end of the story – God will prevail – we find ourselves at this point in history confused as to what point in the story we are reaching.

            I don’t know if you know it, but I’ve written two murder mysteries. In the first on I killed a nun, I think something in my childhood might have suggested that to me … but I digress. The point is, I know how stories are told, the protagonist always faces ups and downs, expected but often unexpected challenges which threaten his goals.

            Now we all know in a murder mystery the killer will always be uncovered, we just don’t know how or when. The same occurs in real life, and it should not be any surprise that it occurs in our spiritual lives as well. We know the end, but where are we in the story?

            It seems that we just might be in the part where the world really does hate us and where good men, for whatever reason, do not know Jesus, do not know or understand his teaching.

            There was a time, not too long ago, when Catholics were unique among Christians. Oh we had funny rituals, we didn’t eat meat on Friday and, for many, we were gently forced-fed our religion. It may have seemed quaint or funny, but it was respected. And our brothers and sisters in faith knew and practiced it. Mass attendance in as short time ago as the 1950s hovered around 70 percent. Now we’re lucky if we reach 30 percent – in fact some surveys indicate we’re losing a percent a year, and that is considered a conservative estimate.

            Our people, our brothers and sisters in Jesus, have all too often found themselves unsure of what this thing we call Catholicism is. Too often people would introduce themselves as having grown-up Catholic but for some reason have fallen away from the faith. Many still have family members who are devout but they themselves have lost their connection with the Church. 

            When we visit they will often ask questions. I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked a question about our beliefs and traditions that the Catholic person asking me should already know.

            It kind of reminds me of the old story about the young priest who was sent by his bishop into a village that had never had a priest. To get a feel of the community, the young priest asked people what they thought was the greatest Catholic feast. He got several answers that made no sense until he found an old man sitting alone in a park. He asked him the same question.

            “Easter,” the man replied.

            “And why Easter?” the priest asked.

            “Because, that is when the stone was rolled back and Jesus stepped out of the tomb … and if he sees his shadow …”

            Well, that’s kind of what we see. People, Catholics, who should know better are confusing the story of our salvation with stories that have no relevance to our faith. Too many are accepting the world in all its decadent glory.  

            Now, of course, there is a reason for this. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you what it is. There are many suggestions about what went so wrong that we lost so many of our brothers and sisters to a theological ambivalence. Some say Vatican II is to blame, others say it was the loss of so many of those beautiful black veiled sisters who had dedicated their lives to teaching the faith. Liberal catechesis and the rejection of Paul VI’s encyclical on birth control, Humanae Vitae, and if you look long enough you’ll find dozens of other theories that the wags on Facebook promote. 

            But I don’t know what it is, I have some theories, but nothing you could bet the farm on. What I do know is that something has happened in the last 50 years that has loosened the glue that had attached many to the faith we love. And I do know that we must, if we wish to follow Christ’s final charge, do something about it.     

            We hear a lot about evangelizing the world. I think perhaps we should also take another look – a look inside – and see how many of our brothers and sisters in Christ need to be re-evangelized. How many need what some might call fraternal correction – gentle, not harsh.

            That is our mission. That is what we are required to do. Those were the last words of Christ to his disciples – to us, we are, after all, nothing, if we are not his disciples.

            And he’s sending the Spirit to aid us, to envelop us, to give us the courage and strength to do so.

            Next week we celebrate his coming at Pentecost. When the Holy Spirit came at the first Pentecost, the hearts and souls of the original apostles were engulfed in his love and enflamed to carry out Christ’s great command: to go and to baptize all nations.

            We celebrate that great event next Sunday, when he came to the apostles. He also came to us in our own baptism. So let us take a little time to prepare ourselves to meet him again as we look forward to next Sunday. Let us renew that flame whose light might have dimmed a bit. Let us take some time this week before the Blessed Sacrament to welcome him back into our hearts so that we can become the new building blocks for the Church.

            We have 24 hour adoration in our chapel. So let’s take the time this week to welcome him back, to prepare ourselves to accept Christ’s great command: to evangelize the world, starting with our own friends and families.

-- Deacon Mike Manno St. Augustin Parish Des Moines, Iowa

Sooo, The Supreme Court… Anybody Want To Start Over?

By Deacon Mike Manno

(The Wanderer) – Okay, you might ask, so what’s with the Supreme Court?
Well, it’s taken a beating lately and under the leadership of Chief Justice John Roberts it has done nothing to distinguish itself. Now don’t get me wrong, I think the court has been doing a nice job in protecting our religious liberties and many other issues close to the heart of Christians in general and Catholics in particular. But on some of the big, and I mean really big, issues, it has let us down, mostly by its inaction.

Case in point: Just last month the court refused to allow a case to be brought against the state of California by the state of Texas over a 2016 California law that banned official travel to Texas and several other states that failed to meet specific standards regarding discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression.

Besides Texas, the states that were affected were Alabama, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Tennessee. According to the then-attorney general of California, Xavier Becerra, now the Biden administration’s secretary of Health and Human Services, 11 states were on the ban because of laws or practices designed to protect religious liberty. North Carolina was on the list because it enacted a law requiring state agencies to maintain separate-sex bathrooms, and my home state, Iowa, was on the ban because it wouldn’t provide Medicaid coverage for gender-reassignment surgery.

In February of 2020 the attorney general of Texas filed suit in the Supreme Court against California over the travel ban. In its filing with the Supreme Court, Texas produced the legislative record of the California law which was replete with anti-Christian and anti-religious references including a sponsor’s complaint that called religious beliefs the “old ways” and that “religion has been used again and again as a tool to justify discrimination.”

That led to Texas’ argument that the California ban was “grounded in animus towards religion,” and “The California Legislature expressly found that other states rely on ‘religious freedom’ as a ‘justification for discrimination’.” In addition to religious animus, Texas alleged violations of the Privileges and Immunities, Interstate Commerce, and Equal Protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution.

“[T]he express aim of California’s travel ban is to punish the citizens and businesses of the target states to pressure those states ‘to change their laws’ to provide fewer protections for religious freedom,” Texas wrote to the court, adding, “As intended, the direct and indirect effects of the travel ban are, respectively, to harm the businesses in the targeted states and to deprive the targeted states of associated tax revenue.”
Ultimately 19 states filed briefs in support of Texas.

Now, a little bit of procedure to fill in some of the missing points here. Under the Constitution, the Supreme Court has only appellate jurisdiction on the vast array of cases that are presented to it. However, under Article III, Section 2 of the Constitution, the Supreme Court has original jurisdiction in a limited number of cases including ones where a state is a party, and appellate jurisdiction in all other cases.

In simple language that means that the jurisdiction of the Supreme Court is limited to reviewing cases that have been decided elsewhere and cannot act as a trial court — that is, hearing the case for the first time, which is known as original jurisdiction. Just as an aside, the benchmark 1803 case of Marbury v. Madison, from which the concept of judicial review of legislative action has grown, involved the question of the court’s original vs. appellate jurisdiction.

Here, Texas was invoking the Supreme Court’s original jurisdiction — its limited ability to hear the case as a trial court. It was, after all, one state suing another state over infringements against its sovereignty: Where else would you go in such a situation?
That’s when the Supreme Court dropped its bombshell; without explanation the court refused to accept Texas’ application for leave to file its case. Zip, done, nada. Texas, just live with it!

Two of the justices, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, to their credit, dissented. Justice Alito compared the decision to a hypothetical case of a federal judge who refused to hear a diversity suit — one between citizens of two different states — because he had more important things to do (which might indicate the topic of discussion in chambers). “We would reverse in the blink of an eye,” Alito wrote. “We might also wag a finger at the lower courts and remind them that a federal court’s obligation to hear and decide cases within its jurisdiction is ‘virtually unflagging’.”

He continued, “The State of Texas wishes to sue the State of California and invokes our ‘original and exclusive jurisdiction of all controversies between two or more States.’ Can we justify our refusal to entertain Texas’ suit on essentially the same ground that we would reject out of hand in the hypothetical diversity case just described, that is, on the ground that our original jurisdiction no longer seems as important as it was when the Constitution was adopted, and that a proliferation of original cases would crowd out more important matters on our appellate docket?…

“We have no more right to decline the exercise of jurisdiction which is given, than to usurp that which is not given. The one or the other would be treason to the Constitution. . . . The practice of refusing to permit the filing of a complaint in cases that fall within our original jurisdiction is questionable, and that is especially true when, as in this case, our original jurisdictional is exclusive.

“The principal reason provided — that entertaining all suits between two states would crowd out consideration of more important matters on our appellate docket — rests on a dubious factual premise and, in any event, is essentially indistinguishable from the justification given by the imaginary district court judge with a distaste for diversity cases.

And the suggestion in Louisiana v. Texas (cite omitted) that we should hesitate to entertain suits between two states because they are of a ‘delicate and grave’ character seems exactly backwards. It is precisely because these disputes have a ‘delicate and grave’ character that they were placed exclusively in our hands….

“Unlike the regional courts of appeals, the federal district courts, and the state courts, we are not tied to any region or state and were therefore entrusted with the responsibility of adjudicating cases where the suspicion of local bias may run high. The present case is just such a suit.”

So where does that leave Texas? For starters, without a forum to have its day in court. But it left California happy. Attorney General Rob Bonta said the court’s decision was “a win for California and it’s a win for our commitment to respecting LGBTQ+ rights. Bottom line: Texas can’t dictate how the State of California uses its own resources.”
But it seems to me that Bonta has it backwards; the case was about California trying to dictate policy to other states.

Unfortunately we’ll never know if Texas and the nineteen states that supported it were right or not. We’ll never know if California’s actions violated the Equal Protection Clause, or the Interstate Commerce Clause, or the Privileges and Immunities Clause of our Constitution. We’ll never know those things because the Roberts Court continues its stubborn refusal to consider those cases which strike at the heart of federalism and the mechanics of our constitutional government, such as those pre- and post-election cases — especially from Pennsylvania — that were rejected out of hand and didn’t even offer us the illusion of an objective look.

We deserve more. Right or wrong the court is obligated to hear, deliberate, and render decisions in cases like these. That is their sworn duty. In that they have failed.

(You can reach Mike at: DeaconMike@q.com, and listen to him every Thursday at 10 a.m. Central, on Faith On Trial, on IowaCatholicRadio.com.)

This week’s Faith On Trial program:

Matt Zerrusen, president of Newman Student Housing Fund; Mike Gonzales, Sr. Fellow @ Heritage Foundation, author: The Plot to Change America; How Identity Politics is dividing the Land of the Free. (Scroll down the right column to order the book.)

Beware The Anti-Racism Agenda

By Catholic League president Bill Donohue

The Catholic Church regards racism to be "intrinsically evil" and supports policies to check it. It must be noted, however, that today there is no shortage of educators, reporters, activists, and lawmakers who claim to oppose racism while harboring an agenda that sometimes promotes it.

They do so mostly for ideological reasons, though those in the diversity and grievance industry also profit from it monetarily. Critical race theory, which is an inherently racist prescription—it judges people on the basis of their skin color, not their individual traits—is a textbook example of promoting racism in the name of fighting it.

In my lifetime, never have non-whites been treated more fairly than they are today, yet there is an avalanche of news stories that say just the opposite. While objective conditions have definitely improved, the perception that we are a racist nation is widespread. How can this be?

When Senator Tim Scott, an African American, recently said that "America is not a racist country," he was ridiculed, maligned, and insulted. Why the anger? Because he challenged, to great effect, the raging narrative in elite quarters that America is irredeemably racist.

Vice President Kamala Harris was asked to comment on what Scott said. "No, I don't think America is a racist country," she said, but we need to "speak truth about the history of racism." Previously, she went further than that when she declared, "America has a long history of systemic racism." 

President Biden is concerned about racism as well, claiming that "white supremacists" constitute the "most lethal terrorist threat." He took his cues from the FBI which is preoccupied with white supremacists.

Ask most Americans who qualifies as a white supremacist and the likely answer is someone who belongs to the Ku Klux Klan. But the Klan has actually been in decline. So who are these people who pose the "most lethal terrorist threat"?

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is the go-to site that journalists use to access information about white supremacy and hate crimes. It is a left-wing activist organization that claims to monitor such offenses.

Last month it sounded very much like President Biden when its president and CEO, Margaret Huang, said, "We're facing a crisis of far-right extremism and deep threats to our democracy." From whom? She identified the mob storming the Capitol in January as being "led by white supremacists and other far-right extremists."

Huang provided no evidence to support her remarks; she simply asserted that white supremacists were the principal culprits. It apparently never occurred to her that these men and women were mostly angry pro-Trump supporters who felt disabused by electoral politics and political correctness, concerns that have nothing to do with feelings of racial superiority. Veterans and former police officers appear to have been overrepresented. If they are white supremacists, we need to see the empirical evidence.

In fact, the SPLC does a lousy job defining who these white supremacists are. Its lengthy report, "The Year in Hate and Extremism 2020," says an awful lot about white supremacists but is noticeably short on identifying exactly who they are.

For example, it says they track "extremist flyers," reporting that they found 4,900 "flyering incidents." The worst offenders, it said, were those who promoted the "white nationalist ideology," a train of thought it left undefined. It did not say who these white nationalists were or whether they were responsible for any violence. It did say that the Klan is no longer "a significant generator of white supremacist terror," largely because it "saw its count dwindle to 25 groups in 2020." So who are the new Klansmen?

SPLC has racism on the brain. In its report, it expresses dismay over the fact that "only 38 percent of respondents" in a survey believed that "systemic racism" accounts for a disparity in health outcomes between whites and non-whites, "even as COVID-19 ravages communities of color."

It did not say whether white supremacists were to blame for this condition, but it did say that it was unnerved to learn that the majority of Americans thought that Black Lives Matter (BLM) violence in 2020 was a bigger problem than police violence against blacks. With good reason: BLM killed 25 people, assaulted the police, burned down entire neighborhoods, and engaged in widespread looting. In 2019, police shot and killed 999 people: 452 were white and 252 were black; 26 of the whites and 12 of the blacks were unarmed.

For the record, SPLC regards as "far right" extremists anyone who thinks that boys who "transition" to girls should not be allowed to compete against girls in sports and shower with them. Perhaps they are the new Klansmen.

Real racism and extremism, as the Catholic Church understands it, must be opposed and defeated. It does not help this noble cause when prominent Americans and non-profit organizations are bent on finding racism under every rock.

Faith On Trial for this Thursday (5-13-21)

Building faith communities on college campuses – Matt Zerrusan, president of the student housing fund and chief of innovative discipleship at Newman Ministries, and

Identity politics and how they are shaping religious liberty in the U. S. – Mike Gonzalez, senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and author of The Plot to Change America: How Identity Politics is Dividing the Land of the Free.

 

Faith On Trial airs every Thursday morning at 10 a.m. (Central Time) on Iowa Catholic Radio, 1150 AM; 88.5 & 94.5 FM, and streaming live from IowaCatholicRadio.com where you can also find podcasts of earlier programs.

Calling on Moderate Democrats | The Stream

Calling on Moderate Democrats | The Stream: Where are the moderate Democrats as Biden governs as a radical? Where are they when it comes to the border disaster?