Ss. Cyril and Methodius Ukrainian Catholic Church

United States Conference of Catholic Bishops headquarters in Washington, D.C. / Credit: Farragutful, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 10, 2024 / 15:55 pm (CNA).

A U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) committee chairman’s call for the U.S. government to remove Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism has sparked a swift backlash from various quarters.

On Tuesday, the USCCB released a letter by Bishop A. Elias Zaidan, chairman of the USCCB’s Committee on International Justice and Peace, in which he urged U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to “remove Cuba’s designation as a State Sponsor of Terrorism.” 

In his letter, Zaidan cited the position of his predecessor, Bishop David Malloy, who in the same capacity opposed the designation made by the Trump administration in January 2021. 

Cuba is currently on the U.S. government’s list of State Sponsors of Terror along with North Korea, Iran, and Syria. Countries are added to the list if they have “repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism.”

Zaidan echoed Malloy’s 2021 statement that “for decades, in conjunction with the Holy See and the majority of the international community, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops has urged collaboration and mutually beneficial relations between the United States and Cuba, as well as the full lifting of the economic embargo against the island nation.”

Zaidan’s letter was welcomed by Cuba’s embassy in the U.S., which denounced the “harmful consequences” of Cuba’s inclusion on the list. More than 250 progressive organizations worldwide also recently ramped up the campaign to get Cuba removed from the list, asserting that Cuba is not a state sponsor of terrorism but rather “a state sponsor” of “health,” “peace,” and “liberation.”

However, Zaidan’s letter also sparked a swift negative reaction from dissident and pro-democracy leaders opposed to the Cuban regime.

In an interview with CNA, Yuri Pérez, an exiled Cuban dissident and director of Latin American Studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, argued that the USCCB committee was “advocating for the regime.”

“There are two different issues,” Pérez said. “One is the embargo and sanctions, which are tools the U.S. government uses to pressure the Cuban government to change,” he explained. “The terrorist list is more factual,” he said. “It’s based on regime behavior.”

Pérez said there is “a lot of pressure for the Biden administration to take Cuba off the list,” but “to make that decision, the regime has to change its behavior. And it hasn’t changed its behavior.”

One factor in Cuba’s inclusion on the list, Pérez said, is that it harbors terrorists on the island. 

“An easy step for the regime to get off the list would be to expel those people and surrender them to the countries seeking them,” he argued.

Jason Poblete, an attorney, Catholic, and president of the Global Liberty Alliance (GLA), said in an interview with CNA that the USCCB committee’s letter was “disconnected from reality.” 

Poblete said GLA has specifically worked with the Catholic Church in Cuba on human rights and religious freedom issues. The U.S. bishops, Poblete argued, “should respectfully stick with matters of faith and not issues related to national security.” 

Poblete noted the reasons for classifying a country as a state sponsor of terrorism are largely classified by the State Department. 

“Most Cuban priests I deal with are supportive of the designation,” he said, even though they do not know the specific reasons for it.

Poblete dismissed the notion that the U.S. embargo of the island is contributing to its ongoing crises. The embargo allows for vital products such as food and medicine, he said. 

“The problems in Cuba are nothing to do with the embargo,” he said. “It’s a totalitarian police state. I wish the bishops would take that into account before they write things like this.”

Along with allegations of terrorism support, Cuba’s communist government has long been criticized for its chronic human rights violations. The group Human Rights Watch, for example, says the Cuban government “continues to repress and punish virtually all forms of dissent and public criticism” and employs “arbitrary detention to harass and intimidate critics.”

Pérez, meanwhile, said lobbying efforts to remove Cuba from the list are likely to intensify in the coming months, especially if President Joe Biden loses the presidency. Advocates, he argued, would work to push the Biden administration to strike Cuba from the list before the Democrat leaves the White House. 

“Expect a flurry of activity if Biden loses before he transitions,” he said.  

The USCCB did not respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

St. Mary’s Catholic Preschool in Littleton, Colorado. / Credit: St. Mary Catholic School

CNA Staff, Jul 10, 2024 / 14:27 pm (CNA).

Two Catholic parishes in Colorado are appealing a June federal court ruling that granted them access to a state preschool program, arguing that though the court ruled in their favor in the matter, it did not extend them sufficient protections of religious liberty. 

The U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado ruled on June 4 that the preschools at St. Mary Catholic Parish in Littleton and St. Bernadette Catholic Parish in Lakewood can be included in the state’s universal preschool (UPK) program even though they prioritize the admission of Catholic families.

The court found that the state had discriminated against the Catholic parishes by “creat[ing] an unworkable scheme that breaches the appropriate limits on state power,” according to the judge’s opinion.

Though part of the ruling was in their favor, the preschools are still unable to participate in the program and uphold their religious beliefs, according to a statement from Becket, the nonprofit religious liberty law firm that is arguing on behalf of the parishes. 

Ryan Colby, a spokesman for Becket, told CNA on Wednesday that “the court ruled that Catholic preschools in the Archdiocese of Denver can consider religious affiliation in their student admission and operations decisions.” 

“However, the judge upheld the part of the UPK requirements that say the preschools can’t abide by and uphold their beliefs about sexual orientation and gender identity,” he said.

Nick Reaves, counsel for the case with Becket, explained that they are appealing the decision because the schools still cannot participate in the program while following their religious convictions. 

“While the district court correctly recognized that the state has no right to prevent Catholic schools from considering religious affiliation in their enrollment decisions, the court still did not permit them to participate in the UPK program while operating consistently with their Catholic mission,” Reaves said in the statement. 

In archdiocesan guidance, for instance, schools are directed “not to enroll” students if there is, in part, “a conflict between what the school teaches and what same-sex parents are teaching their child regarding human sexuality.”

In its June ruling, in contrast, the federal court ordered that equal-opportunity law “demands that participating preschools ‘provide eligible children an equal opportunity to enroll and receive preschool services regardless of ... religious affiliation, sexual orientation, [or] gender identity ..., as such characteristics and circumstances apply to the child or the child’s family.”

Becket noted last month that “any appeal from this decision would be to the Denver-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit.

“We look forward to vindicating our clients’ rights on appeal,” Reaves said on Wednesday.

The National Eucharistic Pilgrimage enters St. Josephine Bakhita Parish in St. Louis. / Credit: Jonah McKeown/CNA

St. Louis, Mo., Jul 10, 2024 / 09:33 am (CNA).

Pam White was raised Catholic but left the Church in 1984, in part because the homilies weren’t speaking to her. 

It was the Eucharist — and the fact that she never stopped believing that Jesus was present there — that brought her back to the Catholic Church after five years away.  

“I’ve always done Eucharistic adoration — it’s just in me,” White told CNA.

Now, White wears many hats at her historically Black Catholic parish, St. Josephine Bakhita, in St. Louis — catechetical leader, children’s ministry leader, and most recently the parish point person for the National Eucharistic Revival. White said she assumed that role after she asked Father Mitch Doyen, her pastor, who was spearheading the Eucharistic Revival events at their parish. 

“You are,” she recalled Doyen saying.

St. Josephine Bakhita Parish was formed from a recent merger of three former parishes, which came into effect in October 2023. According to the archdiocese, the three former parishes originally had Irish roots in the 1800s, but over the years, the once Irish neighborhoods became primarily African-American and the profile of the parishes changed, too. 

Today, most parishioners come from outside the parish boundaries to attend Mass here. The surrounding neighborhoods are primarily poor, 82% African-American, and only 1% Catholic. 

St. Josephine Bakhita Parish was chosen as a stop on the Serra Route of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimages, a monumental effort to process the Eucharist hundreds of miles starting at the four edges of the country. The Serra Route began in San Francisco in May and, thousands of miles later, arrived in the St. Louis area July 5 to enthusiastic crowds. The pilgrimage will culminate, along with the other three routes, with an arrival in Indianapolis on July 16 in time for the National Eucharistic Congress. 

As part of the parish’s participation in the national movement, White helped to organize a July 6 lunch for the Perpetual Pilgrims — young people committed to walking the entire route with Jesus — to support them during their day of service with the Missionaries of Charity, which is located right in the parish’s “backyard,” White said. 

Patrick Fayad, one of the Perpetual Pilgrims, said the pilgrimage experience has been a reminder that following Christ is not always an experience of “constant comfort.”

“I’m with a bunch of strangers doing something really difficult, giving up my personal freedoms, and we spend a lot of time in silence around each other,” he said.

“Through it all, he’s allowed us and given us the grace, whether we sense it or not, to be present to him and also to love each other.”

He said seeing the enthusiasm of the people they have encountered, whether in big cities like St. Louis or in small towns, has offered him constant reminders of the reason they are doing the pilgrimage in the first place — Christ himself.

“The Lord has given us, at least for me, the gift of remembering why I’m here and the beauty of it. It’s given me energy, through encountering other people and seeing masses of people that are excited,” Fayad said. 

The parish also hosted Eucharistic adoration after Auxiliary Bishop Mark Rivituso of St. Louis processed the Eucharist from the Missionaries of Charity to the magnificent church (originally St. Teresa of Avila Church) that serves as the primary worship site for St. Josephine Parish.

Augustus “Gus” Lewis has attended the church that is now part of St. Josephine Parish since he was 5 years old. He was present for lunch with the pilgrims and wore a shirt depicting the faces of several prominent African-American Catholics who are being considered for sainthood, including Father Augustus Tolton. 

Despite his name, Gus says he wasn’t named after Tolton — “I was named after my grandfather,” he said, laughing. He said he very much hopes that the Catholic Church will soon recognize as saints the holy men and women his shirt depicts. 

White, who is planning to attend the National Eucharistic Congress with a handful of her fellow parishioners, said one of her favorite things about Eucharistic adoration is the opportunity to sit in silence with Jesus. 

“When I first started adoration, I was really filling it up with things like the rosary and reading … but you should really be listening to God. My focus when I get there is, ‘Lord, what do you want me to do? Lord, how am I doing with what it is you want me to do?’”

“I’m just really excited to bring this [adoration] to our church. There were some older Catholics here that hadn’t ever been to Eucharistic adoration,” White told CNA.

Pope Francis greets medical workers administering the vaccine against COVID-19 April 2, 2021. / Credit: Holy See Press Office

ACI Prensa Staff, Jul 10, 2024 / 08:00 am (CNA).

“Everything possible must be done to keep the churches open and operational,” said Dr. José María Simón Castellví, president emeritus of the International Federation of Catholic Medical Associations (FIAMC) in a recent essay for that organization titled “Preparing the Church for the Next Pandemic.”

Castellví began his article explaining that “when I say Church, I mean the Church that is still a pilgrim on this earth” and that by pandemic he means “any event transmissible by air or orally; or an attack with a radioactive component.”

“Until now the preparation of our churches for cases of health catastrophes has been poor,” lamented the veteran health care professional, although he recognized that “that Catholic doctors in some countries, such as those in the United States, develop very detailed contingency plans.”

For the Spanish physician, the Catholic hierarchy “should do more to ensure that the word of God, the sacraments, and our charity reaches the faithful and even evangelize those who do not yet know the good news.”

“The preparation for a good and holy death — the reunion with the Almighty — requires our hard work. Divine providence also counts on it,” he added.

The Catholic doctor then referred to the defunct Pontifical Council for Health Care Workers (for Health Pastoral Care) — of which he himself was a member — which was later integrated into the current Dicastery for Integral Human Development.

“Unfortunately very little has been done for health or health care in this department. The [Pontifical] Council for Health Care Workers has not even been established, as was required according to the statutes signed by Pope Francis. This void, on such an important issue, also spreads to episcopal conferences and other ecclesiastical organizations,” the doctor noted.

In a new pandemic ‘we cannot be caught off guard’

Castellví pointed out that “when another global event happens that forces us to take drastic preventive measures,” as was the case with the COVID-19 pandemic, “we cannot be caught off guard. “Everything must be done to keep the churches open and operational.”

The Catholic doctor conceded that “hesitation during the first days” is understandable “but then you must be clear about the protection measures and you must act in science and in conscience, formed, informed, and refined by grace.”

“COVID has taught us that we can keep churches open if we use good masks, ventilation, distance between people, hand hygiene, and so on. Holy Communion, the use of holy water, or the anointing of the sick can be safely distributed by taking a few steps,” he said.

The health care professional encouraged the hierarchy “to consult organized Catholic doctors and other organizations such as the Royal Academies. National and international civil authorities must be respected. However, they have their own agendas and are generally not particularly concerned with pastoral care.”

Deficiency of information during COVID-19 ‘not acceptable’

After stating that the COVID-19 pandemic “really existed and caused the death of millions of fragile people,” the renowned Catholic doctor warned that this scenario “has served states to carry out a great ‘in vivo’ experiment for social control.”

“There are still many open questions about the disease (origin, vaccine prevention, treatments) in this post-pandemic period. In many countries there has been an excess of mortality that cannot be explained only by the lack of control of certain other pathologies during pandemic confinements,” the president emeritus of FIAMC noted.

Castellví said “the limited amount of information provided to the population was not acceptable while they were vaccinated with new drugs, bought en masse with secret contracts, without the informed consent that is required for almost any action, without applying the precautionary principle in pregnant women or children (the disease affects them very slightly, unlike what happened with the Spanish Flu) and falsely implying that vaccination prevented the transmission of the disease.”

“Good medicine is what is always needed. And the Church must prepare in time for our next vital challenges,” the doctor concluded.

This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.

Cheryl Sporie, chair of the board of trustees at St. Thomas Aquinas Academy in Marinette, Wisconsin, stands in front of the vacant Garfield Elementary school building in the Marinette School District. Sporie filed a claim against the district on June 25, 2024, urging the district to sell the property after it refused to sell it to the Catholic school. / Credit: Photo courtesy of Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty

CNA Staff, Jul 10, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

A Catholic school has taken legal action after a Wisconsin school district refused to sell it an elementary school building that has sat empty for two years. 

The former Garfield Elementary School building in the Marinette School District in northeastern Wisconsin has not been in use since it closed in 2022. The district listed it for sale at about $300,000 but later rejected a full-price offer from St. Thomas Aquinas Academy (STAA), saying that it could create competition for the public school district and citing declining enrollment. 

“If [the building] was owned by another entity that provides these similar services, more dollars could go to that entity, which then has an adverse impact on our taxpayers,” Marinette School District Superintendent Corry Lambie said in February.

Cheryl Sporie, the STAA chair of the board of trustees who made the offer, filed on June 25 a claim against the district with the nonprofit conservative law firm Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), urging the district to sell the property.

WILL Associate Counsel Lauren Greuel called the school’s decision a “slap in the face to the community,” citing cases of crime at the empty school building.  

“The school district ought to prioritize the safety and concerns of the public before their own,”  Greuel stated in a June 25 press release. “By not selling this vacant building, residents, taxpayers, and property owners are on the hook for lower land values and rising crime rates.”  

The elementary school building is in the ideal location for STAA, several blocks away from its current middle and high school building in Marinette. The school’s current elementary building is in a different city, Peshtigo, which is about a 15-minute drive. 

STAA has a long history in the area, according to its website. The academy was officially founded almost 20 years ago when it merged together local Catholic schools that had been in the area in some form for more than 100 years.

“We are not trying to take business away from them, we are simply trying to provide a better service for the students in this community already enrolled in our school,” she explained. 

“While the district has discretion in determining to whom it would like to sell the Garfield property, it cannot continue to use taxpayer dollars to maintain the building it is not using,” WILL Counsel Cory Brewer and Greuel noted in their June 25 claim notice to the school district. 

“Given that the Garfield property has not been used as a school for the last two school years and has declined to sell it, the district has no authority to continue to hold the building or to spend taxpayer money to maintain it,” they wrote.

Brewer and Greuel also noted that the empty building has had 25 separate incidents where the police were called in the past two years, including cases of trespass and vandalism. 

“By refusing to sell the property and continuing to leave it vacant, the district is creating a public nuisance and exposing taxpayers to additional harm and expense due to the potential for serious property damage caused by one or more of these past incidents and future similar incidents,” the counsels said.

Families joined the procession as the Eucharist left the Shrine of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne, headed for St. Peter Parish. / Credit: Jonah McKeown/CNA

St. Louis, Mo., Jul 9, 2024 / 17:50 pm (CNA).

Summer heat and the Missouri River’s rising floodwaters did little to deter thousands of people, including many families with young children, from joining over the weekend for Eucharistic processions and other events in St. Louis as part of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage. 

Kimberly and Jason Lytle, parishioners at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Church in St. Charles, organized a large group from their parish to attend the procession. They brought their sons Joseph and Matthew and greeted Father Stephen Schumacher, associate pastor at their parish.

Bridget and John Hilmes of nearby Florissant, Missouri, attended the procession with their two children. They made the walk from St. Charles Borromeo, but the chapel at the shrine was too packed to fit their stroller into. Thankfully, the shaded area outside the shrine was breezy and pleasant. “It’s a beautiful day to adore Jesus,” Bridget Hilmes said.

Brandon and Celie Gervais came from St. Peters, Missouri, just down the road. They brought their three children, with the youngest riding in a carrier on his father’s back. 

On Saturday, the Serra Route’s Perpetual Pilgrims — a group of young people committed to walking the entire route with Jesus — visited the Missionaries of Charity at their home in a low-income neighborhood in north St. Louis City. The pilgrims were warmly welcomed to St. Josephine Bakhita Parish, a historically Black congregation only a block or two from the Missionaries of Charity, for lunch and fellowship. 

Sunday’s events began with Mass at a packed Cathedral Basilica of St. Louis, celebrated by Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski, with the 5.5-mile procession beginning immediately afterward. 

Outside the cathedral, a lone pro-abortion protestor stood with a sign, waiting for the procession to exit the church. A young Catholic mother of three, with her children in tow, attempted to block the man’s sign with her body as the Eucharistic monstrance approached.

“It was the Holy Spirit” that inspired the woman’s pro-life witness, she told CNA afterward. “I just didn’t want Jesus to see that,” said the mother, whose name CNA is withholding for her privacy.

In the 90-degree heat, not every family with children walked the entire way. The Flaim family — Silvio and Ellen — from Crestwood, Missouri, joined for the last mile or so with their two children and enjoyed the experience. 

Alex and Mary Hermann from Arnold, Missouri, and their young son joined near the end of the procession as well. 

Gabe Jones, a Knight of Columbus, was one of several St. Louis-area Knights who accompanied the Eucharist the entire way, oftentimes reaching up to hold tree branches out of the way of the canopy and passing bottles of water to people who needed them. He met his family at the end of the route at St. Stephen Protomartyr Parish. 

Jones said the procession group was so large that he noticed groups praying the rosary in one area and groups singing and chanting in others. 

“When you have a group that big, it kind of becomes an organic thing,” he said. 

The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Linz, Austria, is the largest church building in that country. / Credit: Dein Freund der Baum, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

CNA Deutsch, Jul 9, 2024 / 16:25 pm (CNA).

Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller, prefect emeritus of the Congregation — now Dicastery — for the Doctrine of the Faith, condemned a controversial figure displayed in the Linz cathedral in Austria depicting the Virgin Mary giving birth and described it as “advertising for feminist ideology that violates the natural sense of modesty.”

An unidentified person decapitated the figure a few days after it was put on display. The statue bears the title “Crowning,” which can be understood as an allusion to the coronation of the Virgin Mary. However, the term also refers to the moment during birth when the baby’s head can be seen for the first time as it emerges from the birth canal.

The figure in the Linz cathedral explicitly shows exactly this event: the Virgin Mary with her legs spread and the top of the head of the Baby Jesus between them. For reasons of discretion, both television and other media have generally omitted the view between the legs, which was nevertheless exposed for view to all visiting the Linz cathedral.

Meanwhile, the Diocese of Linz told the website kath.net that “the sculpture will remain in the Mariendom art hall until the planned end of the exhibition [July 16], but will not be visible. “The doors are closed, the lights are off.”

Müller told kath.net: “A critique of changing Christian art from being a means of piety into an advertisement for feminist ideology in violation of the natural sense of modesty cannot be pseudo-enlightened countered with the accusation of prudishness or pseudo-theologically as an expression of an ultra-conservative attitude.”

“If a pictorial representation of the birth of Jesus offends believers and causes a division in the Church [between self-proclaimed progressives and those who are reviled as conservatives], the aim of Christian and especially sacred art, which is to express the infinite beauty of God in human works, has been missed,” the cardinal explained.

“A pictorial representation of the mystery of revelation of the true birth of God as a human being must have the aim of strengthening viewers in their belief in the incarnation of God and of focusing on Christ and worshipping him as God and Savior,” the prelate pointed out.

Esther Strauß, the artist who made the figure, spoke out after the attack on the statue, saying: “Most images of the Virgin Mary were made by men and have therefore often served patriarchal interests. Theologian Martina Resch put it well: In ‘crowning,’ Mary gets her body back. Whoever removed the head of the sculpture acted very brutally. For me, this violence is an expression of the fact that there are still people who question women’s right to their own bodies. We must oppose this very decisively.”

In 2021, Strauß took part in an event called “Witch Talks.” The description at the time read: “Esther Strauß is represented with three of her works in the exhibition HEXEN. What the performance photographs and sculptures have in common is that they leave the beaten path of the remembrance, mourning, and commemoration rituals practiced in the so-called West. Instead, risky connections are made with the dead. These delicate relationships that they build take the circle of ancestors and family far beyond Western everyday understanding and lead to a community with a larger vision of solidarity.”

On her website, Strauß describes herself as a “performance and language artist.” She also writes: “In 2016, I dug my grandfather’s grave with my hands and slept in his soil for a night.”

This story was first published by CNA Deutsch, CNA’s German-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by ACI Prensa and CNA.

The National Eucharistic Pilgrimage passes southwest of Omaha, Nebraska, on June 21, 2024. / Credit: Kate Quiñones/CNA

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 9, 2024 / 16:05 pm (CNA).

Pope Francis praised the ongoing National Eucharistic Revival in the United States, saying in a letter published Tuesday that he wished to extend a special blessing to all those attending the National Eucharistic Congress later this month.

“The faithful who approach the heavenly banquet, strengthened by the protection of heaven, are able to work more vigorously and diligently in sustaining their daily duties,” the pope wrote. “For this reason, we were very happy to hear the news about the National Eucharistic Congress in the United States of America.”

Written in Latin, the letter was addressed to Cardinal Luis Tagle, a Filipino prelate who serves as pro-prefect of the Vatican’s Dicastery for Evangelization.

Tagle was appointed by Francis in May as his special envoy to the National Eucharistic Congress, an event that will take place in Indianapolis from July 17–21 and is expected to gather tens of thousands of American faithful.

Tagle will celebrate the closing Mass of the 10th National Eucharistic Congress.

In the letter, the pope commends Archbishop Timothy Broglio, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, and the U.S. bishops for their efforts to increase devotion to the Eucharist. 

Francis also authorized Tagle to serve as his extraordinary representative at the congress on the pope’s behalf.

“Indeed, all participants in this event will be encouraged so that, united with Jesus in the Most Sacred Sacrament of our redemption, they are fully aware of the universal gifts they receive from heavenly food and can impart them to others,” Francis wrote. 

The pope goes on to instruct Tagle to greet all the faithful assembled for the Congress, to “encourage a more vigorous worship of the Eucharist,” and to “express our benevolence to all participants.”

“We wish that the faithful, refreshed with heavenly food, may achieve a happier age and spiritual prosperity,” Francis wrote. “For from the angelic bread, springing forth as if from a spiritual fountain, the wholesomeness and abundance of the Lord’s blessings flow abundantly and flow down.”

This will be the first National Eucharistic Congress in over half a century and a pivotal event in the U.S. bishops’ three-year National Eucharistic Revival, leading into the final year of the revival — the Year of Missionary Sending.

Credit: platinumArt/Shutterstock

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jul 9, 2024 / 15:35 pm (CNA).

With studies showing that most children view pornographic material before they reach their teenage years, several states have passed laws to hold websites accountable for allowing children to access explicit sexual material. 

The subject was the topic of discussion for four panelists at the National Conservatism Conference on Monday, July 8, in Washington, D.C. 

“Parents need better laws to back them up,” Clare Morell, a senior policy analyst for the Ethics and Public Policy Center, said in the talk, titled “Big Tech and Big Porn.”

Morell was joined by Adam Candeub, the director of the Intellectual Property, Information, and Communications Law Program at Michigan State University; Ryan Baasch, the chief of the Consumer Protection Division of the Texas Attorney General’s Office; and Emily Jashinsky, the culture editor of the Federalist, a conservative online magazine.

“Many harms children suffer from digital media are collective in nature,” said Morell, who has pushed for laws to hold pornographic websites liable for children accessing sexually explicit content.

To date, more than a dozen states have laws on the books that require pornographic websites to verify the ages of people who access their content.

The first to pass such laws was Louisiana in 2022. Most states enforce the laws via private lawsuits or by levying civil fines when children access the material.

To access these websites, Morell said children are often able to “enter a false birth date, check a box, and they’re on.” Although parents can try to avoid these harms with screen-time limits and parental controls, she noted that parental efforts alone ”aren’t working” and that “leaving the solution up to the parents isn’t enough.”

“The government sets age limits and restrictions for the common good,” Morell added. “Such collective restrictions are needed now.”

Candeub, who has also worked on getting these laws passed throughout the country, said that obscenity laws historically “kept pornography in creepy stores in the edge of town that most people wouldn’t be caught dead in.”

But now in the age of smartphones, he said the material is easy for anyone to access anonymously with barely any barriers to keep the content away from children.

Candeub noted that the Supreme Court has shot down certain laws that are meant to protect children from accessing pornography because they also imposed burdens on adults accessing constitutionally protected sexual speech. 

For laws to survive legal challenges, Candeub said it’s important the law be “narrow and focused.” However, he also said the Supreme Court “must [also] reevaluate its views on how age verification burdens free speech.” He noted that the precedent is based on “pre-smartphone decisions.”

Baasch noted that pornography websites, such as Pornhub, are trying to make similar free-speech arguments in court to strike down laws that require age verification. But, if states ensure there are privacy protections for adults, he said those challenges should not succeed.

“Legislators can make their age-verification laws particularly safe under the Constitution,” Baasch said, adding that “ID requirements are permissible in … a host of other settings.”

The panelists agreed that pornography also posed numerous dangers to adults, but Jashinsky noted that protecting children is “a higher priority” at the moment.

“Most young people don’t make it out of high school without seeing a stranger engaged in violent sex acts at least once,” Jashinsky said. “... That is not normal. That is trauma. That is mass trauma.”

Jashinsky said that “modern pornography is not natural,” noting that sex historically has been “between humans in an immediate physical context,” but it is now “preserved and sold” and “defined as transactional.” 

Additionally, Jashinsky referenced studies that link viewing pornography with loneliness, anxiety, depression, stress, and the breakdown of marriages.

“To treat [the pornography epidemic] as anything less than a cultural emergency is to defend that status quo,” Jashinsky said.

U.S. Supreme Court, Washington, D.C. / Credit: Bob Korn/Shutterstock

CNA Staff, Jul 9, 2024 / 13:02 pm (CNA).

A nascent Catholic charter school managed by the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City is appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court after the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled that it could not be funded using public taxpayer dollars.

St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School, a joint project between the Archdiocese of Oklahoma City and the Diocese of Tulsa, was set to launch in August as an online, tuition-free, Catholic K–12 charter school based out of Oklahoma City.

In the U.S., charter schools are free, publicly funded schools that have greater flexibility in their operations and management than traditional public schools. In a lawsuit last year, state Attorney General Gentner Drummond had asked the Oklahoma Supreme Court to declare the state’s contract with the school unconstitutional on the grounds that it constituted public funding of a religious institution.

The court last month agreed, ordering the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board to rescind its contract with the virtual Catholic charter school. 

The archdiocese said this week that the school will appeal that decision. 

“The school plans to seek review from the U.S. Supreme Court,” archdiocese spokesman John Helsley told CNA via email on Tuesday. 

The school is working with attorneys from the Notre Dame Religious Liberty Clinic, which is part of the Notre Dame Law School Religious Liberty Initiative. 

Oklahoma state law says that charter schools must be “nonsectarian” in their “programs, admission policies, employment practices, and all other operations.” The Oklahoma Constitution forbids government funding of “any sect, church, denomination, or system of religion.”

The Catholic charter school’s board told CNA last year that the attorney general’s lawsuit “employs the language of fear and discrimination, twists the law of religious liberty beyond recognition, and ignores the very real successes of faith-based schools in our country.”

Drummond, meanwhile, had argued the school’s contract approval “violated the religious liberty of every Oklahoman” by forcing state residents to fund “the teachings of a specific religious sect with our tax dollars.”

The Oklahoma dispute follows several recent U.S. Supreme Court decisions in favor of some public funding of religious institutions. 

A 2022 Supreme Court ruling in Carson v. Makin found that Maine couldn’t exclude religious schools from a tuition aid program. The ruling found that the state violated the free exercise clause of the First Amendment by excluding “otherwise eligible schools on the basis of their religious exercise.” 

The court’s ruling in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Revenue, meanwhile, found that Montana’s Blaine Amendment, which prohibited religious schools from participating in a state scholarship program, violated the First Amendment.