I recently logged onto the Voice of America (VOA) website—an American international broadcaster funded by the U.S. Congress—and saw an article entitled “LGBTQ Members Face Threats in Iraqi Kurdistan,” which discussed the plight of Iraq’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning or queer (LGBTQ) community in the country’s autonomous region of Kurdistan. The segment included … Read more
Last November, Pope Francis, for the first time, called China’s Muslim Uighurs a “persecuted” people, something human rights activists have been urging him to do for years. However, during his solemn Urbi et Orbi Easter blessing on Easter Sunday, Francis snubbed the Uighurs as he carefully omitted any reference to those suffering human rights abuses … Read more
Americans who identify as conservatives thought that, when President Donald Trump was able to get three conservative justices appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court—Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Barrett—the tide favoring the institution of the family, which is based on marriage exclusively between one man and one woman, had finally turned. More so after … Read more
On May 21, our American homeland survived another terrorist attack when the Syrian-born Adam Alsahli shot a sailor who was guarding the gate at a U.S. Naval base in Corpus Christi, Texas. Investigators found the now deceased Alsahli’s social media accounts containing voluminous Islamic religious posts. The translation of his Twitter profile statement, which is … Read more
Edmund Burke once said, “People crushed by laws, have no hope but to evade power. If the laws are their enemies, they will be enemies to the law; and those who have most to hope and nothing to lose will always be dangerous.” By the grace of God, as a society we have not reached … Read more
This year, due to the reaction to the coronavirus pandemic, in many parts of the Catholic world the faithful will not be allowed to partake in the Holy Week ceremonies; the liturgical celebrations will be carried out behind closed doors. While the world has been occupied with the spread of the coronavirus—especially since it appears … Read more
“They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t not know where they have laid him.” Such were the words, as recorded in the Gospel of John, of Mary Magdalene when she ran up to Simon Peter and John after she had gone to venerate the body of Jesus and found the tomb … Read more
President Donald Trump released his long-awaited Israeli-Palestinian peace plan Tuesday, promising a “new dawn” for the region. This comes after the failed $50 billion plan presented last July by the President’s counselor and son-in-law Jared Kushner. Dubbed the “Deal of the Century” by the White House, it aimed to establish financial infrastructure in the Palestinian … Read more
President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order that interprets Judaism as a nationality or race—i.e., it should not be seen exclusively as a religion—so that the federal government can threaten to withhold funds from schools deemed to be fostering anti-Semitism in school activities, programs, curricula, and classrooms. The order was signed the day after … Read more
During the Season of Advent, as we approach the celebration of the Nativity of Our Savior, we should stop to consider that “the first witnesses of Christ’s birth, the shepherds, found themselves not only before the Infant Jesus but also before a small family: mother, father and newborn Son. God had chosen to reveal himself … Read more
British journalist Robert Fisk once stated, “The story of the Armenian genocide is one of almost unrelieved horror at the hands of Turkish soldiers and policemen who enthusiastically carried out their government’s orders to exterminate a race of Christian people in the Middle East.” The extermination of one and a half million Armenian Christians during … Read more
On October 15, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition presented by the Thomas More Law Center (TMLC) to hear Wood v. Arnold, a case brought by Caleigh Wood, a Christian student in the 11th grade at La Plata High School in Maryland. Wood refused to take part in a school exercise she felt would … Read more
Most of us in the West heard about the 276 schoolgirls from northeastern Nigeria who were kidnapped in 2014 by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram. Yet that was only the most infamous instance of Christian persecution in Nigeria, which can be traced back to the 19th-century Sokoto caliphate. Sharia law was officially established in … Read more