Until recently, it was common for some Tibetan families to send one of their young sons to the local monastery to become a lifelong, celibate monk. Historically, up to one in seven boys became monks. //

We found that men with a brother who was a monk were wealthier, owning more yaks. But there was little or no benefit for sisters of monks. That’s likely because brothers are in competition over parental resources, land, and livestock. As monks cannot own property, by sending one of their sons to the monastery, parents put an end to this fraternal conflict. Firstborn sons generally inherit the parental household, whereas monks are usually second or later-born sons. //

Until recently, it was common for some Tibetan families to send one of their young sons to the local monastery to become a lifelong, celibate monk. Historically, up to one in seven boys became monks.

May 2012
Psychological Science 23(6):635-42
DOI:10.1177/0956797611431987
SourcePubMed

Researchers have proposed that the emergence of religion was a cultural adaptation necessary for promoting self-control. Self-control, in turn, may serve as a psychological pillar supporting a myriad of adaptive psychological and behavioral tendencies. If this proposal is true, then subtle reminders of religious concepts should result in higher levels of self-control. In a series of four experiments, we consistently found that when religious themes were made implicitly salient, people exercised greater self-control, which, in turn, augmented their ability to make decisions in a number of behavioral domains that are theoretically relevant to both major religions and humans' evolutionary success. Furthermore, when self-control resources were minimized, making it difficult for people to exercise restraint on future unrelated self-control tasks, we found that implicit reminders of religious concepts refueled people's ability to exercise self-control. Moreover, compared with morality- or death-related concepts, religion had a unique influence on self-control.

What moved the brave men who stormed the beaches of Normandy and scaled the cliffs of Pointe du Hoc was the firm resolve and spirit that liberty and virtue, freedom and duty, God and justice, were bound together and it is only in this unity that true freedom and progress be enjoyed. The relativism preached today is contrary to the American Founding and the American resolve and spirit that confronted the great darkness of Nazism and totalitarian ideologies in the twentieth century.

Looking back at the great American tradition of freedom, we find the necessity of virtue and belief in the justice of God as the common pillars upon which freedom stands. Today’s license of choice exiles virtue and God from freedom. This is intentional. The enemies of freedom and progress who seek to enact centralizing decrees over all need the elimination of virtue and God from the hearts of the people in order for their totalitarian impulses to be realized.

One winter afternoon I was relaxing with a half-dozen fellow graduate philosophy students discussing theories of law and punishment. About an hour into the discussion, it occurred to me that some moral laws might limit pleasure and enjoyment in the short term but in the long term minimize suffering and maximize human fulfillment.

A few days ago I finished studying Sex and Culture for the second time. It is a remarkable book summarizing a lifetime of research by Oxford social anthropologist J.D. Unwin.[1] The 600+ page book is, in Unwin’s words, only a “summary” of his research—seven volumes would be required to lay it all out.[2] His writings suggest he was a rationalist, believing that science is our ultimate tool of inquiry (it appears he was not a religious man). As I went through what he found, I was repeatedly reminded of the thought I had as a philosophy student: some moral laws may be designed to minimize human suffering and maximize human flourishing long term.

Unwin examines the data from 86 societies and civilizations to see if there is a relationship between sexual freedom and the flourishing of cultures. What makes the book especially interesting is that we in the West underwent a sexual revolution in the late 1960’s, 70’s, and 80’s and are now in a position to test the conclusions he arrived at more than 40 years earlier. //

I have prepared a 26-page collection of quotes from his book that summarize his findings (2), but even that would leave you with a significant under-appreciation of the rigour and fascinating details revealed in data from 86 cultures. Here are a few of his most significant findings: //

Unwin found that when strict prenuptial chastity was abandoned, absolute monogamy, deism, and rational thinking disappeared within three generations of the change in sexual freedom. So how are we doing as we enter the second generation since our own sexual revolution at the end of the 20th century?

As to the specific things Harrison Warren advocates, they are primarily the same tired socialist proposals that were in vogue before LBJ’s Great Society; their objective is the infantilization of single mothers and the funding of a massive social service bureaucracy. We know that the government programs that attempt to implement these plans don’t produce anything but more poverty and more bureaucrats. What is more disturbing is that she is essentially pushing the same slander that we on the pro-life side have heard from the pro-aborts for years, that is, that we don’t care about the baby after it is born.

What is missing from Harrison Warren’s critique?

Family, for one. At no point does she encourage marriage or not banging everything in sight. Men are marginalized in our society. They earn fewer than half of all college degrees.

They are more likely to drop out of school, participate in the workforce, use drugs, and be involved in serious crimes.

The focus on “empowering economically disadvantaged women” totally misses the cultural genocide being wrought on our young men. If it “take two to tango,” maybe being married to a man who has earning ability is a better solution for father, mother, and child than being enrolled in a government program that will penalize the woman through loss of entitlements, if she does get married or improves her economic status. Maybe, hear me out, a committed relationship is better socially, economically, and psychologically than a hook-up app. Perhaps addressing the “demand” part of the equation instead of monomaniacally focusing on the “supply” issue is in order. //

Evangelizing is hard work, but the fact is that without some religious foundation, without changing hearts, trying to change the culture is a lost cause. I was stunned that a priest (even an Anglican) could approach an issue so profoundly intertwined with orthodox Christianity as abortion and not call for greater involvement by churches in assisting pregnant women. Totally anecdotal, but my experience is that those churches with the most robust pro-life ministries are also very likely to be actively involved in helping pregnant women in all aspects.

Perhaps making common cause with pro-aborts is a really, really stupid idea. Social movements are subject to the Iron Law of Bureaucracy, the same as any government agency. That law is “in any bureaucratic organization; there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.” I don’t have to tell you in which category you’d find the pro-aborts and where those folks who’ve spent decades on the picket lines would be. Inviting pro-aborts into the pro-life movement, unless they’ve had an “Abby Johnson moment,” serves no useful purpose.

It is said that every cause starts out as a movement, then it becomes a business, and finally, a grift. Since Roe became law, the pro-life movement has stayed true to its founding vision (with some exceptions). There is a lot of work to be done, but, unlike just a year ago, you can now visualize a time when abortion will be illegal in most states, and normal people will recoil in horror at the idea of killing a baby because it is inconvenient. We should all look forward to that day when we can say our work is done. We’ve eradicated abortion and changed the culture so that families are stronger and single mothers have a safety net that does not involve a caseworker and a handout. And then we should lock the doors and turn out the lives and go back to our homes, churches, and communities and sustain what we have accomplished by how we live our lives.

No, reversing Roe doesn’t mean the work of the pro-life movement is over; neither does it mean that we become campaigners and salesmen for the administrative state.

“That’s a pincer movement. Religions themselves have failed and the secular world. It is the overwhelming dynamo of society. I’ve said for years, secular societies influenced religions much more than religions have influenced secular society in the last hundred years,” Prager noted during the interview.

Much of the loss of religion in our society, Prager observed, is based on Americans forgetting the influence of their faith.

“People forgot what their religion is about, you know. They went on automatic pilot. They didn’t teach their kids what America means. And so America doesn’t mean much to most kids. And the same with the religions, Judaism and Christianity. They didn’t teach their kids why the religion is so relevant to society,”

Prager notes, “I’m not blaming them.” Instead, he highlights, “I’m just describing a reality. That’s what happened. They didn’t convey the meaning, and so the kids just dropped it.” //

You know who opposed Soviet communism? Pope John Paul II from Poland, and Muslims in Afghanistan, and the Jews in the Soviet Union. These were the nemeses of the Soviet Union. You either worship the God of the Judeo-Christian world or the god of Marx. That’s what it really amounts to,” Prager shared. //

“I can tell you what has worked for me,” Prager answered. “For almost half a century explaining to people rationally why God and the Bible are necessary. That’s why I’ve embarked on this massive project of a five-volume commentary on the first five books of the Bible called the Rational Bible.” //

“My vehicle to God is purely through reason. I admit I don’t have a mystical bone in my body. I envy people who do, but I don’t. My vehicle to God and religion is purely through reason. But I have found that that is the most persuasive way to touch people, at least to the times in which we live,” Prager explained.

‘If the prosecution wins, the ability of pastors to preach the gospel is effectively over in Finland, without criminal sanction.’

This is how the prosecution framed the case during the trial.

Prosecutor Anu Mantila said it is quite clear that Räsänen has a freedom of religion, but that does not exclude responsibility in using Bible verses.

“If so, the views of the Bible have supplanted the Finnish Constitution”, Mantila said.

The prosecutor made a distinction between the internal and external side of religious freedom: people are allowed to think what they want, but the expression of faith can be restricted. “I emphasise that freedom of thought and conscience is unrestricted. This court does not address the religious views of the Bible and homosexuality. It is addressing the expression of these views.”

The prosecutor reiterated her earlier position that human deeds and identity are indistinguishable. “When one judges deeds, the whole person is judged. Actions cannot be separated from identity because actions are part of identity. Understanding deeds as sin is derogatory”.

According to the prosecutor, the insulting nature of Räsänen’s expressions is obvious. Offensive is emphasised by the focus on sexual identity, the “core of humanity”. //

A decade ago, Archbishop Charles Chaput, then archbishop of Philadelphia, wrote a must-read essay on Christianity’s challenge in America.

Catholics need to wake up from the illusion that the America we now live in—not the America of our nostalgia or imagination or best ideals, but the real America we live in here and now—is somehow friendly to our faith. What we’re watching emerge in this country is a new kind of paganism, an atheism with air-conditioning and digital TV. And it is neither tolerant nor morally neutral.

As the historian Gertrude Himmelfarb observed more than a decade ago, “What was once stigmatized as deviant behavior is now tolerated and even sanctioned; what was once regarded as abnormal has been normalized.” But even more importantly, she added, “As deviancy is normalized, so what was once normal becomes deviant. The kind of family that has been regarded for centuries as natural and moral—the ‘bourgeois’ family as it is invidiously called—is now seen as pathological” and exclusionary, concealing the worst forms of psychic and physical oppression.

My point is this: Evil talks about tolerance only when it’s weak. When it gains the upper hand, its vanity always requires the destruction of the good and the innocent, because the example of good and innocent lives is an ongoing witness against it. So it always has been. So it always will be. And America has no special immunity to becoming an enemy of its own founding beliefs about human freedom, human dignity, the limited power of the state, and the sovereignty of God.

Paivi Rasanen spoke to The Federalist about her free speech case that has huge implications for Christians across the West. //

“I was happy to have the possibility to also tell the gospel—the solution to the problem of sin—in front of the court and in front of the media,” she said. Speaking about the first day of her trial, which occurred in January, Rasanen said, “When so many people were praying for the day, God also answered the prayers. It was quite a hard day, but I thought it was a privilege to stand for the freedom of speech and the freedom of religion and stand for the truth of the Bible.” //

“I would characterize the day as a modern-day Inquisition or heresy trial,” Coleman said in a phone interview from Helsinki last month after the trial’s first day. “And the heresy was that Paivi and Bishop Juhana were on trial against the new sexual orthodoxy of the day.” //

The deeply theological nature of this case has been clear throughout, Rasanen said, putting courts in a “very odd situation” of litigating permissible religious views inside a constitutional democracy that claims to guarantee the freedoms of speech and religion. //

The prosecutor also charged Rasanen falsely, she said, with believing that homosexuals are not created by God.

“According to her [the prosecutor], you cannot make a distinction between a person’s identity and his or her actions,” Rasanen said. “So she said if you condemn the act, you also condemn the human being and say they are inferior.”

On the contrary, Christians believe that all humans are sinners and have equally ineffable value to God. They believe humans’ worth can absolutely be separated from their actions. Otherwise, humans stand forever condemned for everything they’ve ever done wrong.

Christianity teaches that God is willing to forgive all sins. All that’s required is to confess those sins. This also means Christians consider homosexuals and transsexuals as they do everyone: equally precious, forgiven, welcomed, and loved by God.

American history, furthermore, has been marked by numerous Great Awakenings. There is no better time to expect a new Great Awakening than in the aftermath of an all-encompassing worldwide crisis of meaning. There can be no starker reminder to the partisans of scientism and radical environmentalism that Mother Nature is not necessarily our friend. Earth-worship, which has ancestral pagan roots even before the Greeks sang the praises of the goddess Gaia, is incapable of providing meaning to the human condition. Rather, genuine meaning can only be found by dedication to pursuing permanent truth, discerning permanent truth, and, ultimately, living in accordance with permanent truth.

The solution, in short, is religion. The solution is the need for a revival of America's distinct Judeo-Christian heritage, whose substantive underpinnings have chastened our excesses of intemperance, inculcated virtue across generations and permitted Americans to freely engage in the most fundamental pursuit known to man: seeking and abiding by truth according to the dictates of one's own conscience. //

In his Farewell Address, President George Washington said, "(L)et us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle."

It is a rare instance when I almost entirely agree with anything in the Big Culture-Big Media outlet The Atlantic. But recently they published this….

America’s Gambling Addiction Is Metastasizing:

“When life feels this precarious, it’s only natural to roll the dice on just about everything.” //

“The chief benefit is that there’s a lot of money to be made, for governments and businesses both. The primary cost is that many unlucky and vulnerable people are destroyed.

“American society has (now) accepted that trade-off—big money now for social crisis later—on any number of fronts: in its banking sector, in its housing markets, in its health-care industry. The rise of gambling is simply one example of our boundless desire for risk.” //

So why not gamble your money? It appears to be the only way you can actually accrue wealth. In a country whose institutions are actively destroying your money — and corruptly working with others to steal it.

The only flaw in the article? Its apparent attack on short-term bank loans to poor people.

Marche doesn’t specifically mention the utter corruption of the 2008 housing crisis, but it fits right in with the theme he’s developed.

That crisis was caused by Big Government and Big Banks colluding to steal money out of the home mortgage market by throwing trillions of dollars at poor people everyone knew couldn’t pay it back. //

Ninja loans are another name for NINA which stands for no income, no assets….”

This was Big Banks gambling trillions of dollars — of our money — on nigh guaranteed losers, with Big Government rigging the system — so the Big Banks’ wins were guaranteed, and its losses outsourced to US.

Big Banks paid themselves obscene fees on each awful loan they made. Until it destroyed the home mortgage market — and with it the global economy.

At which point Big Government left US to die — and gave the Big Banks trillions of our dollars. Which the Big Banks immediately used to give themselves huge bonuses as reward for royally screwing US.

The lesson that should have been gleaned from this mess is: If poor people with bad credit want to borrow money, the loan terms should reflect the risk posed.

Which this article bizarrely criticizes:

“…(C)redit lines with 23 percent APR….”

These are actually short-term loan rates. If you’re poor and out of money on Tuesday — they’ll loan you money until payday Friday.

It’s a credit line for poor people. Unlike the idiotic housing crisis loans – these have an interest rate that accurately reflects the risk of lending to poor people. It’s the marketplace — accurately reflecting the marketplace.

These loans — and the people who take them — have NOTHING AT ALL to do with our society’s descent into a gambling ethos culture.

These people aren’t borrowing this money to bet the ponies. They are borrowing it to fix their car so they can keep getting to work.

These loans are lifelines for the people who take them. And they are often the only lifelines they are offered. //

jeffs
an hour ago
Americans’ greater acceptance of — and penchant for
Fill in the blank with any moral degradation from divorce to abortion to shacking up to slothfulness to the alphabet soup agenda, et. al.

Breitbart was correct but forgot culture is downstream of faith and religion; the Christian faith. Churches, pastors, denominations are ultimately to blame for our current judgment. God has handed us over to our vices which will consume us.

This is why there is no political answer to the problems plaguing our Nation.

The evangelical movement flourished in this relatively anti-institutional country at a particularly anti-institutional time. Evangelical ministries and churches fit the “spirit of the age,” growing rapidly in the 1970s, and retaining more of their members even as many mainline denominations declined.

At the same time, Keller argues, that anti-institutional tendency makes evangelical communities more prone than others to “insider abuse”—corruption committed by leaders who have almost no guardrails—and “outsider-ism,” in which evangelicals simply refuse to let their church form them or their beliefs. As a result, they are unrooted—and therefore susceptible to political idolization, fanatical ideas, and conspiracy theories.

“What we’re seeing is massive discipleship failure caused by massive catechesis failure,” James Ernest, the vice president and editor in chief at Eerdmans, a publisher of religious books, told me. Ernest was one of several figures I spoke with who pointed to catechism, the process of instructing and informing people through teaching, as the source of the problem. “The evangelical Church in the U.S. over the last five decades has failed to form its adherents into disciples. So there is a great hollowness. All that was needed to cause the implosion that we have seen was a sufficiently provocative stimulus. And that stimulus came.”

“Culture catechizes,” Alan Jacobs, a distinguished professor of humanities in the honors program at Baylor University, told me. Culture teaches us what matters and what views we should take about what matters. Our current political culture, Jacobs argued, has multiple technologies and platforms for catechizing—television, radio, Facebook, Twitter, and podcasts among them. People who want to be connected to their political tribe—the people they think are like them, the people they think are on their side—subject themselves to its catechesis all day long, every single day, hour after hour after hour.

On the flip side, many churches aren’t interested in catechesis at all. They focus instead on entertainment, because entertainment is what keeps people in their seats and coins in the offering plate. But as Jacobs points out, even those pastors who really are committed to catechesis get to spend, on average, less than an hour a week teaching their people. Sermons are short. Only some churchgoers attend adult-education classes, and even fewer attend Bible study and small groups. Cable news, however, is always on. “So if people are getting one kind of catechesis for half an hour per week,” Jacobs asked, “and another for dozens of hours per week, which one do you think will win out?” //

But when people’s values are shaped by the media they consume, rather than by their religious leaders and communities, that has consequences. “What all those media want is engagement, and engagement is most reliably driven by anger and hatred,” Jacobs argued. “They make bank when we hate each other. And so that hatred migrates into the Church, which doesn’t have the resources to resist it. The real miracle here is that even so, in the mercy of God, many people do find their way to places of real love of God and neighbor.” //

He’s heard of many congregants leaving their church because it didn’t match their politics, he told me, but has never once heard of someone changing their politics because it didn’t match their church’s teaching. He often tells his congregation that if the Bible doesn’t challenge your politics at least occasionally, you’re not really paying attention to the Hebrew scriptures or the New Testament. The reality, however, is that a lot of people, especially in this era, will leave a church if their political views are ever challenged, even around the edges.

When it comes to finding ways to help people deal with life's challenges, it would be strange if thousands of years of religious thought didn’t have something to offer. //

This story is adapted from How God Works: The Science Behind the Benefits of Religion, by David DeSteno.

Even though I was raised Catholic, for most of my adult life, I didn’t pay religion much heed. Like many scientists, I assumed it was built on opinion, conjecture, or even hope, and therefore irrelevant to my work. That work is running a psychology lab focused on finding ways to improve the human condition, using the tools of science to develop techniques that can help people meet the challenges life throws at them. But in the 20 years since I began this work, I’ve realized that much of what psychologists and neuroscientists are finding about how to change people’s beliefs, feelings, and behaviors—how to support them when they grieve, how to help them be more ethical, how to let them find connection and happiness—echoes ideas and techniques that religions have been using for thousands of years. //

Regularly taking part in religious practices lessens anxiety and depression, increases physical health, and even reduces the risk of early death. These benefits don’t come simply from general social contact. There’s something specific to spiritual practices themselves.The ways these practices leverage mechanisms of our bodies and minds can enhance the joys and reduce the pains of life. Parts of religious mourning rituals incorporate elements science has recently found to reduce grief. Healing rites contain elements that can help our bodies heal themselves simply by strengthening our expectations of a cure. Religions didn’t just find these psychological tweaks and nudges long before scientists arrived on the scene, but often packaged them together in sophisticated ways that the scientific community can learn from.

The surprise my colleagues and I felt when we saw evidence of religion’s benefits was a sign of our hubris, born of a common notion among scientists: All of religion is superstition and, therefore, could have little practical benefit. I’ll admit that we’re unlikely to learn much about the nature of the universe or the biology of disease from religion. But when it comes to finding ways to help people deal with issues surrounding birth and death, morality and meaning, grief and loss, it would be strange if thousands of years of religious thought didn’t have something to offer.

Over the past few years, as I’ve looked back at the results of my studies and those of other researchers, I’ve come to see a nuanced relationship between science and religion. I now view them as two approaches to improving people’s lives that frequently complement each other. It’s not that I’ve suddenly found faith or have a new agenda to defend religion. I firmly believe that the scientific method is a wonder, and offers one of the best ways to test ideas about how the world works. Like any good scientist, I’m simply following the data without prejudice. And it’s humbling.

Rather than scoffing at religion and starting psychological investigations from scratch, we scientists should be studying rituals and spiritual practices to understand their influence, and where appropriate, create new techniques and therapies informed by them.

In the absence of the divine, humanity has always looked to somewhat more tangible (but no less complex and just beyond our grasp) targets for our faith. In the case of an increasingly secular United States, the Democrats (and, to a lesser extent depending on the circumstances, Republicans) put all of their faith in the government, expect its power to flow to them in a more grotesque and symbiotic way than the woman who sought healing from Christ. And, while Jesus was given the power to help and heal the people of God, government is given power and uses it to feed and grow itself.

The result is a behemoth that constantly requires feeding and that no one in office seems to have the bravery to deny. The legislative branch surrenders its power to the executive, and the executive branch surrenders its power to bureaucracies, which exist solely to give themselves purpose and become accountable to no one. //

Rather than putting their faith in the divine and seeking a greater, eternal reward, they wish to put all their faith in government and hope that its power will save everyone. That, however, is an insane proposition that ignores all the times giving all the power to government not only didn’t work but actually made things worse. The very idea that government can solve all of our problems is anathema to the foundations of the country, drafted by men who saw exactly what a government with all the power and no accountability could do.

Now, this can’t be all on the Democrats, as there are Republicans who really and truly think that if we just grow government their way instead of the Democrats’ way, we actually can make the country a better place. But growing government is still feeding a beast. Unlike God and Jesus, government does not reward the power your put into it by rewarding you with its own. Government takes the power you give it and only uses it to feed itself and grow bigger. //

Jmied01
3 hours ago edited
I think this explains the rift in America; half the country believes in God as their salvation and authority and half of the country doesn’t. So they have to replace him with another higher being, and they look to government, and I can’t think of any outlook on life more depressing.

I often struggle to think what makes people look at Joe Biden or Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton the way that a Maddow or a Stelter or any other dem sycophant does, but it’s pretty simple when you understand that humans crave leadership and a power higher than them, and without a god there is no higher power than their pathetic government.

Actually, I think a fair and dispassionate reading of this article and the rest of Ms. Schumann’s work would say she is selfish (her irrational fears take precedence overall). If being opposed to the Constitution and our traditions qualifies one as unpatriotic, then bingo.

She and her experience are the focal point of everything she writes about…like, for instance, the book from which this essay was extracted. She is demanding that others give up something to make her feel better, while she gives up nothing. Her definition of “compromise” seems to be “how much of your stuff am I going to take.”

Her rhetorical question is just stupid. The only way me giving up my guns saves a life is if you are accusing me of being a murderer-in-waiting. One might, with equal justice, demand, “If buying a gun meant saving a life (this is much, much more likely scenario than hers), would you do it?”

Her denigrating the faith of others because they don’t share her unreasoning fears is the action of someone who is actually using God as nothing more than a debate tactic. //

Then we have this, which seems theologically ignorant as well as manipulative and selfish:

If you know and love Jesus and are going to spend eternity in Heaven with him, why does the idea of not having guns anymore scare you so much?

When we recite the Lord’s Prayer, we say “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” There are no guns in heaven. When I pray this prayer, I ask that God would help me bring some of his kingdom to earth. I pray that, in the same way, there would be no gun violence here on Earth, just as there is no gun violence in heaven.

One hardly knows what to do with this. There is no food in Heaven, so why do you care about it here? And yet, one of the Christian Corporal Works of Mercy is feeding the hungry. There is no marriage in Heaven (Matthew 22:30), but it is a significant religious rite on Earth. //

What Ms. Schumann loses track of, along with a crap-ton of other things, is that the gun is nothing more than a value-free tool. It is much like a hammer or a wheel, or a screwdriver. What you do with the tool makes the difference. Murder was forbidden long before the invention of gunpowder. In Schumann’s view, owning a gun means that you, by definition, place gun ownership above being a Christian.

I don’t come from whatever religious tradition that spawned Ms. Schumann. The Catechism of the Catholic Church states in very strong terms that protecting others from harm is part of the Golden Rule. That extends to the use of deadly force if there is no other way. //

In Exodus, we are told we can kill a home invader at night. In Nehemiah, we are told to fight to defend our families. In Esther, Jews take up arms against an unjust ruler (sort of the main purpose of the Second Amendment). Jesus frequently uses the metaphor of a shepherd protecting his flock from thieves and robbers. Because a shepherd killed marauding animals (see David and his sling), one can assume He is not talking about hugging it out.

No matter how you come down on guns, we should be able to agree that murder is wrong, that self-defense is a right, that defending the helpless is an obligation, and that gun regulation is a secular policy argument and not theology.

It lacks any facts because it's a pressure piece, pure and simple, designed to intimidate America's bishops into doing what The New York Times thinks they should do.

The Supreme Court’s unanimous judgment was a clear win not only for Catholic Social Services but for First Amendment advocates looking for a strong denunciation by the court of blatant religious discrimination by the city government.

Even so, the court’s opinion was narrower than some advocates of religious freedom would have preferred.

The Catholic agency had asked the Supreme Court to overturn Employment Division v. Smith, a problematic 1990 opinion that has restricted the free exercise of religion for decades. The court instead found that this case fell outside the parameters of Smith and declined to reexamine the precedent.

The justices split 6-3 on whether the opinion in Smith should be overturned immediately.

Roberts’ 15-page opinion, which declined to overturn Smith, was joined by Justices Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett.

Justice Samuel Alito penned a 77-page concurrence, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch, arguing that the court should overturn Smith.

Alito offered extensive textualist and originalist analysis of the Constitution’s free exercise clause, concluding that the “case against Smith is very convincing” because of how that decision “conflicts with the ordinary meaning of the First Amendment’s terms.”

In a separate concurrence, Gorsuch noted that the court’s failure to address the old opinion hands the Catholic agency a rather tenuous win. As Gorsuch explained, that opinion allows governments to restrict religious exercise through laws that are “neutral” and “generally applicable.”

In the Philadelphia case, the majority opinion found that the law in question contains a clause that made it not “generally applicable,” rendering the law’s restriction of religious freedom unconstitutional.

Gorsuch noted that “with a flick of a pen, municipal lawyers may rewrite the city’s contract” to remove the problematic clause and make the law generally applicable.

If this happens, Gorsuch said, the Catholic agency will find itself “right back where it started,” in danger of being shut down by the government and in a new round of litigation. For this and other reasons, Gorsuch supported Alito’s recommendation to overturn Smith.

But, as Justice Alito stressed in his dissent, there is an easy way around the court’s decision: eliminate the Section 3.21 exemption—an exemption the city never used. “If it does that, then, voilà, today’s decision will vanish—and the parties will be back where they started,” Alito explained.

And he is right. The case of Jack Phillips from Masterpiece Cakeshop proves the point. Justice Gorsuch highlighted this in his separate concurrence, which Justices Alito and Thomas also joined.

“After being forced to litigate all the way to the Supreme Court, we ruled for him on narrow grounds similar to those the majority invokes today,” Justice Gorsuch wrote. Specifically, in that case, “because certain government officials responsible for deciding Mr. Phillips’s compliance with a local public accommodations law uttered statements exhibiting hostility to his religion, the Court held, those officials failed to act ‘neutrally’ under Smith.”

However, “with Smith still on the books,” Justice Gorsuch added, “all that victory assured Mr. Phillips was a new round of litigation—with officials now presumably more careful about admitting their motives.” That is precisely what Phillips faces now, being fined and again hauled into court for refusing to craft a “gender transition cake.”

The time has long since passed for the high court to overturn Smith, and Justices Gorsuch and Alito’s concurrences, which Thomas joined, lay bare that reality. So, while yesterday’s decision was a win for CSC, it was not a victory for religious liberty.

Biden likes to talk a big Catholic game when he’s campaigning, but like most Democrats, the moment power is achieved is the moment that Catholicism gets tossed out of the window. As a result, American bishops are going to have a meeting to discuss whether or not he should be denied Holy Communion. //

According to The Hill, the Vatican has already warned these bishops not to deny Biden communion over abortion.

“The concern in the Vatican is not to use access to the Eucharist as a political weapon,” Antonio Spadaro, Jesuit priest, and ally of the pope told the New York Times.

An argument can be made that it’s not being used as a weapon, so much as making sure that the church not punishing this actual act against Catholic teachings isn’t seen as a tacit endorsement. The church could lead on the issue by seeing to it that when the question is asked how the church feels about abortion, the answer is clear and present.

Biden and the “Party of Women’s Rights” enthusiastically support biological males kicking the hell out of biological females in women’s sports. In effect, it’s a perfect “Animal Farm” parallel: “All females are equal. But some ‘females’ are more equal than others.”

The fact remains, women of American, your rights as a biological female have been usurped — with the blessing of Biden and the Democrats. Your former number-one place in line has been handed by so-called “progressives” to biological males. //

Of course, Biden’s directive forced religious institutions to violate not only their views but a core tenet of their faith, as well. Does this remind anyone of anything?

Remember when a 2015 Supreme Court ruling made same-sex marriage the law of the land? Remember also how same-sex couples promptly rushed to Christian churches and demanded to be married?

In contrast, remember how same-sex couples did not rush to Muslim mosques or Buddhist temples and demand to be married in either of those “houses of worship,” as well? //

Alliance Defending Freedom is representing College of the Ozarks in its legal fight. Senior counsel Julie Marie Blake said in a statement:

“The government cannot and should not force schools to open girls’ dorms to males based on its politically motivated and inappropriate redefinition of ‘sex.’

“Women shouldn’t be forced to share private spaces — including showers and dorm rooms — with males, and religious schools shouldn’t be punished simply because of their beliefs about marriage and biological sex.

Government overreach by the Biden administration continues to victimize women, girls, and people of faith by gutting their legal protections, and it must be stopped.”