An amazing thing is happening in the 2024 presidential campaign. Religious beliefs and hostility toward religion are playing bigger roles than in any election in modern times.
Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz represent the anti-religious ticket. Their past actions and current statements communicate clear opposition to, and disdain for, religion in ways which would have been unthinkable a decade ago.
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Vice-presidential picks generally balance a ticket, but Kamala Harris’ selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate does anything but. And American Catholics and others who care about the poor and vulnerable should be alarmed.
Consider their attacks against their states’ life-affirming pregnancy care centers. For me, this issue is more than political. It’s personal. Like many Catholics across the country, I volunteer at our local pregnancy centers. I’m the medical director for the centers run by the Archdiocese of Miami and I read their fetal ultrasounds. Helping families and expectant mothers through my work there is one of the most rewarding ways in which I practice medicine.
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A new study by Catholic market research company Vinea Research found that belief in the true presence of Christ in the Eucharist is greater than a 2019 Pew Research study previously estimated.
Pew Research had found that 69 percent of U.S. Catholics personally believe that “the bread and wine used in Communion ‘are symbols of the body and blood of Jesus Christ.’” By contrast, only 31 percent of Catholics said that they believe that “the bread and wine actually become the body and blood of Jesus.”
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Those who would abolish religion and prohibit the free exercise thereof, are themselves religious. Those who would replace religion with the cult of reason, and sacrifice the soul before the altar of science, are unreasonable in the extreme: they are political extremists whose religion is politics.
This religion, with contempt for one nation under God, is in opposition to our civil religion. This religion, with contempt for the idea of God, that God exists, that God is true, that God is just, is without mercy. This religion, with contempt for the sons of Abraham, and of all who are children of God through faith, is a declaration of war against Jews and Christians
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Catholic churches in the United States have been attacked at least 400 times over the past four years, according to data compiled by the Catholic advocacy organization CatholicVote.
The hundreds of attacks across the nation began in connection with widespread civil unrest in May 2020, CatholicVote said. Examples include church burnings, beheadings of statues of Jesus Christ or the Virgin Mary, swastikas painted on grave stones, satanic and blasphemous statements graffitied on walls, windows smashed, Masses disrupted, and even the murder of a Catholic priest.
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On Jan. 28, two terrorists wearing black balaclavas attacked Santa Maria Catholic Church in Istanbul, Turkey. The assailants entered the church as approximately 40 people were attending Mass. During the Liturgy of the Eucharist, the gunmen began firing. Tragically, Tuncer Cihan was killed. He was about to become a Christian, attended church regularly, and was described as “a good person.”
Thankfully, no one else was injured, as the terrorists fled due to one of the guns miraculously jamming.
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Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) tore into FBI Director Christopher Wray Tuesday for not firing anyone for targeting Catholics as potential domestic terrorists.
“You said, and I’m quoting now, ‘The FBI uses all tools available at its disposal to combat domestic terrorism,’ which now includes, apparently, the crime of being Catholic,” Hawley said during an FBI Oversight Committee hearing in the Senate. “Let’s talk a little bit about the FBI’s egregious targeting of Catholic Americans.”
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Pope Francis is set to make the first-ever visit to Mongolia, a country with fewer than 1,500 Catholics, all of whom have come to the faith since 1992. But the pope’s visit is a reminder that the country has a long and complex history with Christianity, among many other faiths.
Mongolia has only 3.4 million people, and at least 87.4% are Buddhists. The small Catholic community came into existence after this landlocked country, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south, began to abandon its communist ideology and embraced different religions. At that time, it also restored diplomatic relations with the Vatican and welcomed Catholic missionaries.
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On Tuesday, the FBI handed over requested documents on its efforts to target Catholic Americans after another threat from Congress to hold Director Christopher Wray in contempt.
As reported by the New York Post, Congressman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, had subpoenaed the files in question and threatened to hold Wray in contempt of Congress if the documents were not delivered by the deadline of July 25th.
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FBI Director Christopher Wray declined to answer direct questions from lawmakers on several hot-button issues at a House Judiciary Committee oversight hearing.
The performance on Wednesday generated frustration on both sides of the political aisle, and a rebuke from FBI alumni.
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The FBI responded on Friday to a lawsuit filed by an advocacy group and claimed that the group is “not entitled” to records regarding the agency’s targeting of Catholics in a memo from January, according to documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Catholic Vote (CV) filed a lawsuit in April against the agency after it failed to respond to Freedom of Information Act(FOIA) requests regarding the FBI’s targeting of Catholics. The FBI issued a seven-page response to the lawsuit and rejected CV’s assertion that the organization has a right to know about the FBI’s records regarding Catholics and a January memo that targeted Roman Catholics as potential domestic terrorists, according to documents reviewed by the DCNF.
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The Media Research Center (MRC) has revealed that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is using the “Targeted Violence and Terrorism Prevention (TVTP) Grant Program” to single out and vilify political opposition- effectively criminalizing freedom of thought and free association. This is the same DHS that has classified the American people’s personal “thoughts, ideas, and beliefs” as “critical infrastructure” and “cognitive assets.”
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America is a diverse country. In most cities, you can find people from nearly every ethnic or racial background imaginable. This is becoming the case in rural areas as well. But America is host to a considerable amount of religious diversity as well. And while race relations are often the subject of considerable discussion, understanding interreligious relations is a necessary part of understanding the country as a whole.
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A dossier alleging Russian collusion funded by a Democrat presidential candidate. A suggestion that school parents were domestic terrorists from a left-leaning school board group. A list suggesting old-fashioned Catholics were extremists from a liberal watchdog on hate speech.
Three triggers for investigation. Three blunders that left America’s premier law enforcement agency reeling with a black eye.
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The fight against Lucifer was going pretty well – until the devilish enginery appeared. As John Milton depicts the battle of Satan’s rebellious angels against the forces of Heaven in his epic poem “Paradise Lost,” the demons were on the backfoot, until they devise “implements of mischief” that will “dash/To pieces, and orewhelm whatever stands/Adverse, that they shall fear we have disarmd/The Thunderer of his only dreaded bolt.”
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The Vatican did not tell bishops not to move forward drafting a document on the Eucharist, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops clarified this week.
The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vox and multiple other outlets have claimed that the bishops were flouting a Vatican warning when they approved a measure June 18 to draft a statement on the Eucharist.
In a document issued June 21, the USCCB explicitly said that the Vatican did not tell the bishops not to move forward with the document.
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