Starr requested training after discovering that Southwest Airlines had not followed a court order in a lawsuit involving a flight attendant who was terminated due to social media posts related to anti-abortion. The court had ordered Southwest to inform its attendants that it cannot discriminate based on religious practices and beliefs. Read more

They're protesting about a proposed law requiring leaders of all faiths to translate their sermons into Danish and submit them to the government.

The new law, is primarily aimed at radical Islamic groups, but will affect all churches.

The country has more over 270,000 Muslims. Sermons in the mosques are generally preached in Arabic.

Denmark's government says the law - which is scheduled to be reviewed this month at the Danish Parliament - is necessary to curb the growth of Islamic extremism.

Some commentators say although the measure is aimed at getting the preaching of jihad out of mosques, Europe's political correctness means a broad, politically correct net is scooping up preachers of all religions.

Church of England Bishop Robert Innes (pictured) wrote a letter to Danish prime minister, Mette Frederiksen expressing his alarm over the measure.

It places an "overly restrictive" bind on freedom of expression, he wrote.

"I am sure it comes from a genuine concern about the security of the state and the monitoring of all religious minorities who might be perceived as a security risk.

"I share the ambition of the Danish government to ensure safety and security and the desire that all religious organizations in Denmark conduct their act peacefully, but to require translation of sermons into the national language goes too far.

"In a democratic society I would hope the government would strive for better cooperation with religious organizations than hastily resorting to legislation interfering with their freedoms.

"This is a first which is why it is so important we find a way to address and encourage the Danish government to find another solution. Because my real concern is that if the Danes do it other countries may copy," he noted. "That would be a very worrying development indeed."

Innes says incremental changes in the law are causing minority groups to be treated with increasing suspicion.

Leaders of the Evangelical Lutheran Church have also written to the Danish government about the changes affecting religious liberty and freedom of speech, saying: "… we are risking that the Danish State neglects the recognition of non-Danish speaking congregations as being part of the ecclesiastical and cultural life of Denmark.

"It would cause great harm, should the many Danish congregations abroad face similar action from foreign states. Passing the bill would furthermore damage the reputation of Denmark in the rest of the world."

An Anglican chaplain in Denmark says she is concerned about sending translated sermons to the government.

"Any sermon depends on Biblical text and context; the scripted and unscripted; the dynamic between preacher and congregation … in a translation, how would nuance, meaning and emphasis be carried?"

Other European churches voicing concerns about the proposed law include the Lutheran World Federation, the Roman Catholic Commission of the Bishops' Conferences of the European Union, and the Conference of European Churches.

Source

• CBN
• Image: St Michael's in the Gard

Compliance includes replacing all religious symbols in their homes with pictures of Chairman Mao and President Xi Jinping.

Christians in several provinces have had visits from government officials and had their religious images replaced.

The policy also applies to members of state-run churches. A member of the Three-Self Church, which is the Chinese Communist Party's official Protestant denomination, says images of Jesus and a religious calendar were taken down from his house and replaced with images of Chairman Mao.

As a result of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, increasing numbers of people are relying on government payments to stay financially afloat. At the same time, the government has overseen a renewed crackdown on places of worship.

A preacher from an illegal-but-tolerated house church says the government is "trying to eliminate our belief and wants to become God instead of Jesus."

In one province which has seen multiple reports of Christian persecution in the last year, a Christian reported that his disability payment was revoked because of his attendance at church.

His wife says he was told they would be "treated as anti-Party elements" if they did not stop going to church.

An elderly member of the Three-Self Church says she lost her government aid after she said "Thank God" upon receiving a subsidy payment.

"They expected me to praise the kindness of the Communist Party instead," she reported.

In April, another elderly woman said her minimum living allowance was canceled when officials discovered a cross on her house's door. The woman, who is a diabetic and needs frequent injections, lost all government aid due to her religious beliefs.

A Christian man told media that in China Mao and Xi Jinping were the "greatest Gods."

"If you want to worship somebody, they are the ones," an official told him.

Since 2015, the Communist government has pushed forward with a program of "sinicization" of religion.

Regular reports of churches being demolished, priests and bishops being harassed and arrested, and strict censorship being imposed on religious teaching continue to emerge from the country.

In some cases Chinese Christians were made to remove displays of the ten commandments from their churches and replace them with sayings of President Xi.

At present between 900,000 and 1.8 million mostly-Muslim Uyghurs are estimated to be in more than 1,300 detention camps set up by Chinese authorities, ostensibly for "re-education" purposes.

Survivors have reported indoctrination, beatings, forced labor, forced abortions and sterilizations and torture in the camps.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Wall Street Journal

The Court found in favor of two Catholic schools in California, ruling that a "ministerial exception" to government interference applies to teachers in religious schools.

The justices ruled in a 7-2 decision that teachers at Catholic grade schools qualified for the "ministers exception" established by the court in the 2012 Hosana Tabor case.

"The religious education and formation of students is the very reason for the existence of most private religious schools, and therefore the selection and supervision of the teachers upon whom the schools rely to do this work lie at the core of their mission," wrote Justice Samuel Alito for the majority.

"Judicial review of the way in which religious schools discharge those responsibilities would undermine the independence of religious institutions in a way that the First Amendment does not tolerate."

The argument behind the court case arose when two California Catholic schools did not renew the contracts of two teachers in 2014 and 2015.

In separate cases combined into one by the Supreme Court, the teachers alleged their dismissals were based on disability and age, not poor performance.

Lawyers for the schools argued teachers in Catholic schools were the "primary agents" by which the faith was taught to students.

The argument - and questions from the bench - focused on how broadly the ministerial exception could be applied to the employees of religious schools.

The schools claimed they were exempt from employment discrimination laws because the government cannot interfere in churches' and religious institutions' employment decisions regarding hiring and firing ministers.

The teachers' suits were both dismissed by federal courts, and then reinstated by the US 9th Circuit Court of Appeal.

"There is abundant record evidence that [both teachers] performed vital religious duties," the Supreme Court ruled.

"Educating and forming students in the Catholic faith lay at the core of the mission of the schools where they taught, and their employment agreements and faculty handbooks specified in no uncertain terms that they were expected to help the schools carry out this mission and that their work would be evaluated to ensure that they were fulfilling that responsibility."

The decision about the religious schools' right to hire and fire their staff comes just weeks after the Court's ruling that employers cannot fire employees because of their sexual orientation or "gender identity." At that time, Justice Neil Gorsuch acknowledged that religious freedom cases related to the decision would probably come before the Court in the future.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: eSchool News

Federal district Judge Gary L. Sharpe has removed religious gatherings from the virtual ghetto in which Governor Cuomo, his Attorney General and New York's Mayor Bill de Blasio had placed them under Cuomo's crazy-quilt scheme of executive orders by which he is enforcing his increasingly indefensible, and in many applications patently ridiculous, COVID-19 lockdown.

Before this decision, religious gatherings alone were confined to 25% of building capacity while secular businesses, manufacturing facilities, nonprofits, office environments of all kinds and even restaurants with permitted tables of ten people—facing each other while eating and talking without masks—were allowed either 100% or 50% occupancy. Read more

Cornelius "Neil" Mahoney, 64, was told July 16 that his cancer was incurable and he would be expected to die within 4-14 months, depending on his treatment, according to a suit filed Aug. 21 in the Arapahoe County District Court by Mahoney and his doctor.

Mahoney quickly inquired about assisted suicide, having anxiety about facing death from cancer and wanting to control the place and time of his death. Read more

Shocking, because religious liberty is a fundamental principle of liberal democracy.

Not surprising, alas, because progressives throughout Western liberal democracies have turned "religious liberty" into a code word for anti-gay bigotry ― and are determined to cleanse the public square of traditional Christian voices.

This is an ominous turn for liberal democracy to take.

As recently as 1993, the US Congress voted nearly unanimously to pass the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), a federal law strengthening general religious liberty protections after a Supreme Court ruling against a tiny Native American sect that used peyote in its worship.

By 2015, however, America had undergone a gay-rights revolution, concomitant with a significant decline in religious belief and practice, especially among the young.

Liberals had come to believe that when religious liberty claims conflicted with gay rights, religious liberty had to lose.

When the state of Indiana passed that year a state version of the federal RFRA, major US corporations brought the hammer down on lawmakers, threatening to punish the state economically for its so-called bigotry.

Indiana relented under pressure.

This was the first time that big business took sides in the culture war ― and it was decisive.

At a national level, the Republican Party, ostensibly the advocates of social and religious conservatism, have never recovered.

They don't know how to defend religious liberty, and would rather change the subject when it comes up.

This is why many American religious conservatives vote for Donald Trump.

It's not because they believe in his integrity. It's because they know that whatever his many flaws, he doesn't hate them.

They trust him to appoint federal judges who believe that religious liberty is a bedrock value that must be defended. And they trust liberal politicians to treat traditional Christians as menaces to society who are not just wrong about LGBTQ rights, but evil.

On LGBTQ issues, the culture war is over, and religious conservatives lost.

It is positively perverse, though, to watch victorious progressives frenetically bouncing the rubble.

From observing the heretic-hunting hysteria surrounding the Israel Folau case, you would think that theocratic tyranny was about to breach the city walls.

You would be hard-pressed to find a demographic with less cultural and economic power than Pentecostals of Pacific Islander descent, yet the good and the great of Australia's elite have bravely ― oh so bravely! ― destroyed the career of just such a man because he hath blasphemed.

To be sure, religious liberty is not an absolute right. Continue reading

• Image: Catholic Family News

At the official "religious freedom" event during his U.S. visit, Pope Francis never mentioned the U.S. bishops' "Fortnight for Freedom" campaigns, nor their battles over alleged religious discrimination on Obamacare provisions and conscience protection issues.

The bishops have certainly made this a priority.

Here was Archbishop William E. Lori last June asking the faithful to support their efforts:

"Religious institutions in the United States are in danger of losing their freedom to hire for mission and their freedom to defend the family."

... Endangered is the freedom of church ministries to provide employee benefits and to provide adoptions and refugee services in accord with the church's teaching on faith and morals.

"It is one thing for others to disagree with the church's teaching but quite another to discriminate against the rights of believers to practice our faith, not just in word but in the way we conduct our daily life, ministry and business."

Perhaps a detailed analysis of these matters was never in the cards for Pope Francis.

At the White House the other day, he did offer generic backing for the bishops, encouraging the defense of religious freedom from "everything that would threaten or compromise it."

And he made a brief, symbolic stop at the Little Sisters of the Poor, a religious order that is suing over the Obamacare provisions on contraception coverage.

If the bishops were looking for something more explicit in Philadelphia, the pope went in a different and more philosophical direction: "Uniformity."

It's a word that's popped up more than once during the pope's U.S. visit.

Clearly, the pope doesn't like it.

As he said at the 9/11 Memorial Friday, religious leaders should be "opposing every attempt to create a rigid uniformity."

But what exactly is he talking about?

Today in Philadelphia we got some explanation.

Citing the French Jesuit scholar Michel de Certeau, the pope said the big threat to religious liberty today comes from "a uniformity that the egotism of the powerful, the conformism of the weak, or the ideology of the utopian would seek to impose on us."

The pope then explained how this uniformity emerges in the modern age, going back to a concept he expressed in his encyclical on the environment, Laudato Si.

"We live in a world subject to the 'globalization of the technocratic paradigm,' which consciously aims at a one-dimensional uniformity and seeks to eliminate all differences and traditions in a superficial quest for unity," he said.

To resist that movement, he said, religions have a duty to promote a healthy pluralism in which differences are respected and valued.

The pope evidently sees such pluralism as the antidote to the push for uniformity.

"In a world where various forms of modern tyranny seek to suppress religious freedom, or try to reduce it to a subculture without right to a voice in the public square, or to use religion as a pretext for hatred and brutality, it is imperative that the followers of the various religions join their voices in calling for peace, tolerance and respect for the dignity and rights of others," he said. Continue reading

Sources:

• John Thavis is a journalist, author and speaker specializing in Vatican and religious affairs. He is known in the trade as a "Vaticanista," a calling that became clear only after a circuitous career path.
• Image: Salt&Light

Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah said authorities had been considering the new Sharia Penal Code for years and it will be enforced in 'phases'.

Punishments under the Hudud code may include stoning for adultery, amputation for theft and flogging for drinking alcohol or even having an abortion.

The code will make Brunei the first ASEAN country to enforce a national Sharia law. Continue Reading - Listen to interview

"In Europe, we have identified 14 laws that are likely to negatively affect the religious liberty of Christians in 15 countries," said Massimo Introvigne, of the Italian foreign affairs ministry.

"In 2012, we also reported 169 rulings made in European courts that we judged to be dangerous to the freedom of Christians," he told the conference in Tirana, Albania.

"The most dangerous areas are those which limit the conscientious objection of Christians who do not want to co-operate in abortion, the sale of abortifacient pills, or the celebration of same-sex marriage; those which limit the freedom to preach through the misuse of laws against so-called ‘hate speech'; those which restrict the freedom of religious education and parents' rights to educate their children, and those which place restrictions on the use of religious symbols," he continued.

The Italian sociologist added that 74 per cent of European Christians think they suffer greater discrimination than persons of other faiths or atheists; 71 per cent think the media generally does not respect Christians; and 61 per cent believe that Christians are discriminated against at their workplace.

The Holy See's representative at the conference, Bishop Mario Toso, SDB, denounced attempts to divide religious belief from religious practice in Europe.

"Christians are frequently reminded in public discourse (and increasingly even in the courts) that they can believe whatever they like in their own homes or heads, and largely worship as they wish in their own private churches, but they simply cannot act on those beliefs in public," he said.

"This is a deliberate twisting and limiting of what religious freedom actually means, and it is not the freedom that was enshrined in international documents."

Bishop Toso declared: "Intolerance in the name of ‘tolerance' must be named for what it is and publicly condemned."

Sources:

Vatican Radio

Aleteia

Image: National Secular Society

The court did not address the religious liberty issue regarding a Health and Human Services mandate that requires religious employers to pay for contraception, abortifacients and sterilisation despite their religious objections.

Twenty-three separate lawsuits are continuing against the law. They involve 56 individual plaintiffs, mostly Catholic, include bishops, universities and news organisations.

"The decision of the Supreme Court neither diminishes the moral imperative to ensure decent health care for all, nor eliminates the need to correct [its] fundamental flaws," said the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops.

"We therefore continue to urge Congress to pass, and the Administration to sign, legislation to fix those flaws."

The bishops have called the health care law a major violation of religious liberty because of the contraception mandate. They also oppose the use of federal funds to pay for elective abortions.

The bishops have made opposition to the HHS mandate and the White House's view of religious liberty the centrepiece of one of their biggest campaigns in a generation. It has included a two-week campaign of rallies, mega-Masses and concerts called Fortnight for Freedom.

"This thing is not over for sure," said Rick Garnett, a Notre Dame Law School professor who has advised the bishops on their religious liberty campaign.

He said the Catholic Church has long supported the general concept of universal health care, but the HHS mandate, which was announced by the White House after the law was passed, was like a "poison pill" for many Catholics.

Among others opposing the mandate, the Christian Legal Society called it "the first exception to our national commitment to protect religious conscience in the abortion context — a tradition that has been bipartisan for 40 years".

Sources:

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops

Christian Post

Washington Post

Image: Bet.com

The move not only escalated an unusual fight between church and state but also threatened to cause splits within the Catholic Church itself.

The Catholic Bishop of Stockton, California, Stephen Blaire, told America magazine that he was concerned the campaign against the mandate was becoming too political.

He said he was worried his fellow bishops were being co-opted by political conservatives. Continue reading

Bishop Jenky has come under fire for comparing President Barack Obama to being on "a similar path" as Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin.

In his sermon, Jenky claimed that American Catholics are currently in a "war" due to the Obama administration's ruling on birth control and other issues.

"Hitler and Stalin, at their better moments, would just barely tolerate some churches remaining open, but would not tolerate any competition with the state in education, social services and health care," preached Jenky.

"In clear violation of our First Amendment rights, Barack Obama, with his radical, pro-abortion and extreme secularist agenda, now seems intent on following a similar path," Jenky added.

"May God have mercy especially on the souls of those politicians who pretend to be Catholic in church, but in their public lives, rather like Judas Iscariot, betray Jesus Christ by how they vote and how they willingly cooperate with intrinsic evil."

Patricia Gibson, chancellor of the Peoria Diocese has sought to help clarify the bishop's comments.

"Based upon the current government's threatened infringement upon the Church's religious exercise of its ministry, Bishop Jenky offered historical context and comparisons as a means to prevent a repetition of historical attacks upon the Catholic Church and other religions," said Gibson.

"Bishop Jenky gave several examples of times in history in which religious groups were persecuted because of what they believed," Gibson said.

"We certainly have not reached the same level of persecution. However, history teaches us to be cautious once we start down the path of limiting religious liberty."

However, Rabbi Daniel Bogard of Peoria's Anshai Emeth congregation said that "casual use of the Holocaust and tragedy in general is really inappropriate."

And, according to the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Bishop Jenky's homily clearly urged people not to vote for Obama in this year's presidential elections, which is in violation of a federal law stating that tax payer-funded organizations should not seek to influence electoral campaigns.

"To be sure, Jenky never utters the words 'Do not vote for Obama,'" Lynn told the Chicago Tribune. "But the Internal Revenue Code makes it clear that statements need not be this explicit to run afoul of the law."

Sources

• Huffington Post
• Chicago Tribune
• Global Christian Post
• Chicago Tribune
• Image: The Inquisitr

Dolan is placed ahead of others like Lady Gaga, Barack Obama, and actor George Clooney.

Described by Time as "The man most likely to give Barack Obama fits on the way to election day," Dolan has been highly critical of the health care mandate from the Obama administration.

However with his crimson cassock, wide grin and rotund good cheer, Dolan is seen as a warm prelate who leads his flock more by charm than fiat.

Putting his church its ideas back in the center of the national political conversation is something Dolan has managed and is something not achieved by other American Roman Catholic leaders in recent times.

While the people vote to get the Top 100, who will be 'The Person of the Year' is now in the hands of the journalists and editors at Time Magazine. The success or failure of the US health care reform and Dolan's role could play a deciding factor.

Source

• Rome Reports
• Time Magazine
• Image: San Antinono

Gates said that the topic of contraception has become a hot topic in recent years, but asked whether it should be.

She believes that many of the world's social change issues depends on ensuring that women are able to control the number of children they have and the rate at which they have them.

Gates said that over 1 billion people will have sex this year and that in her view all these men and women should be free to decide whether they do or do not want to conceive a child, and they should be able to use birth control to help them decide.

"I think you'll have a hard time finding many people disagreeing with this idea," she said.

"They want to power to control their own lives."

Gates said that birth control that is so widely accepted in private brings a lot of opposition in public.

"Birth control has almost completely and totally disappeared from the global agenda, and the victims of this paralysis are the people of sub Saharan Africa and South Asia."

Gates cited statistics that in Germany 66%, El Salvador 66% and Thailand 64% used contraception.

"It's about what you'd expect," she said.

However Gates pointed out some inequalities in using in contraception

• In Uttar Pradesh, one of the largest states in India, only 29% use contraception
• Nigeria 10%
• Chad 2%
• Senegal 12%

Using Senegal as an example, Gates said that rather than using other methods, women in Africa prefer a three monthly injection but every other time they go to the clinic to receive the injection the clinics are out of stock.

As a result 100,000 say they don't want to be pregnant and die in child-birth, and there are another 600,000 who do not want to be pregnant and they give birth, only to have the baby die within the first month of life.

This is not about abortion, nor population control, it's about the equality of fertility choice for women.

"One of the simplest and most transformative things we can do is to give everybody access to birth control methods that almost all Germans have access to, and all Americans.

"As long as we are really clear there is a global movement waiting to happen and get behind this totally uncontroversial idea."

Growing up in a Catholic family and still considering herself a Catholic, Gates said the nuns made service and social justice a high priority in the school.

"Today in the Foundation's work I believe I'm applying the lessons I learned in high school," Gates said.

"In the traditions of Catholic scholars, the nuns also taught us to question received teachings. And one of the teachings we girls, my peers questioned is, is birth control a sin."

Gates says it is fair to ask whether separating sex from reproduction will promote promiscuity, but said her decision to use birth control was not about promiscuity, but about allowing her to fulfill the plan she had for her life.

In this significant talk, Gates makes the case for the world to re-examine the issue of birth control, an issue she intends to lend her voice to for the next decade.

Source

• TED (Video)
• The Gates Foundation
• Image: Impatient Optimists

Our interlocutor prefers to remain anonymous for safety reasons. Even in countries that tolerate some form of freedom of worship, "we depend on the good will of the local authorities." So, considering that the pastoral care of the not-so-small flock is the first priority and that the sensitiveness of the local rulers is very high (and exploitations are always possible), no names or last names will be used.

During these days, the churches in Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Oman and Qatar will be full. And in Yemen, the tiny Christian communities connected to the missionaries of Mother Teresa will gather in Sanaa, Aden, Hodeida and Taif.

"In the compounds where the churches are located we are free. We will have the procession on the territory of the parish; and all the ceremonies of the Holy week will be outdoors." Thousands of people participate. The ceremonies for Good Friday are in quick succession because the churches are full. In the Arab Emirates, the emirs made available the land for the compound free of charge and then the believers constructed the churches with their offerings, "We do not have any other income".

In the Arabic peninsula, a little less than a hundred clergymen take care of more than three-million Catholics. It is unknown how many Christians there are in total, but they are surely very numerous.

Continue reading the interview with a prelate who speaks about an unknown reality fraught with discrimination and lack of freedom: One million Christians 'hidden' in Arabia

Image: Weasel Zippers

"From coast to coast, the response of the crowds at these rallies was a tremendous optimism that we can change the HHS mandate," said Pro-Life Action League Executive Director Eric Scheidler, who planned the March 23 "Rally for Religious Freedom" with Citizens for a Pro-Life Society.

"People came out for the very first time in their lives, to any sort of grassroots protest activity," Scheidler said of Stand Up For Religious Freedom's first effort.

"That happened in Chicago. It happened in San Francisco, in Washington, D.C., in New York, Philadelphia, and other large cities."

Each of those cities drew between 900 and 2,500 people, united in their desire to restore religious freedom by ending the president's contraception coverage rule.

Rapping the US Conference of Catholic Bishops for showing "wonkish precision" in some detailed critiques of the Obama mandate, the America editors claim that the basic thrust of the bishops' argument is misplaced. "Such exaggerated protests," the editors say, "likewise show disrespect for the freedom Catholics have enjoyed in the United States, which is a model for the world—and for the church."

A vocal contingent of Republican presidential candidates and church leaders are railing against the Obama administration's "war on religion," but most Americans can't seem to find the fight.

A majority (56 percent) of Americans say religious liberty is not threatened in the U.S., according to a new poll released Thursday (March 15) by the Public Religion Research Institute, which conducted the survey in partnership with Religion News Service.

The poll, which asked a wide range of questions, also found significant support for same-sex marriage.

The bishops are meeting in Washington this week, and while there is no public indication of their dropping their fight, Reuters reports there are small but clear signs from within the Conference that suggest they maybe re-considering what has been publicly perceived as a narrow and partisan view, as, outlined in a recent Bloomberg News Poll.

The poll, taken between 8-11 March shows Americans see the contraceptive coverage debate as not about religious freedom, but about women's health, and the bishops' anti-contraception campaign as the Church being anti-women.

Seen as not helping the position is a recent column by Cardinal Francis George in the Chicago Archdiocese newspaper.

In his column George accused the Obama administration of plotting to destroy Catholic institutions, a position which reportedly has made some Catholic bishops uncomfortable.

Reuters observes that by broadening their religious liberty campaign to include other social issues the bishops are hoping to get more support on a range of issues, even from those Catholics who might oppose their anti-contraception campaign.

Commenting on the possibility of the bishops broadening their campaign, Fr Thomas Reese, a scholar from Georgetown University said, "they're going to have to look at not just what their moral theology tells them they should do, but at what political reality tells them."

Richard Garnett, a law professor from the University of Notre Dame, agrees, "we cannot let it (religious liberty) be dismissed as merely having to do with one particular question," he said.

Sources

• Reuters
• Bloomberg
• Newspaper for the Archdiocese of Chicago
• CBS News
• Image: The liberal lie in colour