Five Activists Arrested after Attempting to Shutdown Travis Air Force Base for Fourth Time

by Melissa Garriga / March 16th, 2024

In the early hours of the morning, a group of antiwar activists took on Travis Air Force Base, embarking on their fourth attempt to disrupt operations at the military installation that has directly attributed to the genocide in Gaza.

The group’s initial plan to block the main gate was quickly abandoned due to safety concerns as vehicles rushed past, many exceeding way beyond the speed limit. Instead, they positioned themselves at the side of the road, waving posters, flags, and a prominent banner bearing the message:

“STOP TRAVIS: NO US WEAPONS FOR GENOCIDE: STOP ILLEGAL WAR CRIMES AGAINST CIVILIANS.”

Another striking image was that of Aaron Bushnell, alongside his poignant final words: “I will no longer be complicit in genocide… Free Palestine.”

As daylight broke, law enforcement arrived, warning the activists of potential arrest if they violated any laws. Undeterred, the activists continued their protest, marching in the crosswalk during green lights and engaging with motorists stopped at red lights with their chants and placards.

By 8:00 am PDT, the activists had shifted their demonstration to the North Gate of Travis Air Force Base, disrupting traffic flow into the facility. The peace activists distributed leaflets explaining the purpose behind the action to the drivers stalled in the blockade. However, the Fairfield police arrived soon after and arrested five individuals around 9:30 am PDT.

Among those detained were Toby Blomé, Fred Bialy, Wynd Kaufmyn, Jacq Le, and Arthur Koch. Shockingly, Arthur Koch, initially a bystander documenting the protest, was also arrested despite not actively participating. Jacq Le’s attempt to intervene and clarify Arthur’s status led to her being forcefully subdued by an officer, aggravating a healing broken arm injury in the process.

Subsequently, all five activists were taken into custody, transported to Solano County jail, and held until their release at 2:00 pm. Upon their release, Solano Unity Network and Codepink members met them with food and support. However, one of the detainees noted that the police did not return her cash that was with her personal belongings, a common occurrence, according to local activists.

Fairfield Police provided the five with a May 13, 2024, court date. As their cause continues to draw attention, their actions underscore the immediate need for a permanent ceasefire, an end to the genocide in Gaza, and an end to the occupation of Palestine.

Melissa Garriga is the communications and media analysis manager for CODEPINK. She writes about the intersection of militarism and the human cost of war. Read other articles by Melissa.

 

China to US: Spreading Disinformation Cannot Inhibit China’s Progress but Will only Discredit US

by ShanghaiEye / March 16th, 2024

China News Service: It’s reported by Reuters that former US President Donald Trump signed a secret executive order in 2019 to authorize the Central Intelligence Agency to launch a clandestine campaign aimed at smearing China by creating a special team of operatives who acted covertly such as buying off media outlets and using bogus internet identities in China, Southeast Asia, the South Pacific and Africa. What’s your comment? 

Wang Wenbin: I recall that CIA Director William Burns said publicly not long ago that the CIA has committed substantially more resources toward China-related intelligence collection. The report that you mentioned echoes Director Burns’s remarks. It has also once again shown that the US has spread China-related disinformation in an organized and well-planned way for a long time and it’s America’s important approach to wage a battle of perception against China.

US Republican Senator Rand Paul once said honestly that the US government is the biggest propagator of disinformation. The US who often accuses other countries of spreading disinformation is in fact the true breeding ground of disinformation. 

Concocting and spreading rumors will only get one lose credibility faster. Spreading disinformation cannot inhibit China’s progress but will only discredit the US. 

 

Poll: Most Americans say religion’s influence is waning, and half think that’s bad

There is also growing concern among an array of religious Americans that their beliefs are in conflict with mainstream American culture.

(Photo by RDNE Stock Project/Pexels/Creative Commons)

March 15, 2024

By 

Jack Jenkins

(RNS) — As the U.S. continues to debate the fusion of faith and politics, a sweeping new survey reports that most American adults have a positive view of religion’s role in public life but believe its influence is waning.

The development appears to unsettle at least half of the country, with growing concern among an array of religious Americans that their beliefs are in conflict with mainstream American culture.

That’s according to a new survey unveiled on Friday (March 14) by Pew Research, which was conducted in February and seeks to tease out attitudes regarding the influence of religion on American society.

“We see signs of sort of a growing disconnect between people’s own religious beliefs and their perceptions about the broader culture,” Greg Smith, associate director of research at Pew Research Center, told Religion News Service in an interview.

He pointed to findings such as 80% of U.S. adults saying religion’s role in American life is shrinking — as high as it’s ever been in Pew surveys — and 49% of U.S. adults say religion losing that influence is a bad thing.

“49% of Americans say religion’s influence is declining and that this is a bad thing” (Graphic courtesy Pew Research Center)

What’s more, he noted that 48% of U.S. adults say there’s “a great deal” of or “some” conflict between their religious beliefs and mainstream American culture, an increase from 42% in 2020. The number of Americans who see themselves as a minority group because of their religious beliefs has increased as well, rising from 24% in 2020 to 29% this year.

The spike in Americans who see themselves as a religious minority, while small, appears across several faith groups: white evangelical Protestants rose from 32% to 37%, white non-evangelical Protestants from 11% to 16%, white Catholics from 13% to 23%, Hispanic Catholics from 17% to 26% and Jewish Americans from 78% to 83%. Religiously unaffiliated Americans who see themselves as a minority because of their religious beliefs also rose from 21% to 25%.

“We’re seeing an uptick in the share of Americans who think of themselves as a minority because of their religious beliefs,” Smith said.

Researchers also homed in on Christian nationalism, an ideology that often insists the U.S. is given special status by God and usually features support for enshrining a specific kind of Christianity into U.S. law. But while the movement has garnered prominent supporters and vocal critics — as well as backing from political figures such as Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia — Pew found views on the subject were virtually unchanged from when they asked Americans about the topic in recent years.

“Share of Americans who say religion’s influence is declining is as high as it’s ever been” (Graphic courtesy Pew Research Center)

“One thing that jumped out at me, given the amount of attention that’s been paid to Christian nationalism in the media and the level of conversation about it, is that the survey finds no change over the last year and half or so in the share of the public who says they’ve heard anything about it,” Smith said.

About 45% of those polled said they had heard of Christian nationalism or read about it, with 54% saying they had never heard of the ideology — the same percentages as in September 2022. Overall, 25% had an unfavorable view of Christian nationalism, whereas only 5% had a favorable view and 6% had neither a favorable nor unfavorable view.

Researchers also pressed respondents on fusions of religion and politics, revealing a spectrum of views. A majority (55%) said the U.S. government should enforce the separation of church and state, whereas 16% said the government should stop enforcing it and another 28% saying neither or had no opinion. Meanwhile, only 13% said the U.S. government should declare Christianity the nation’s official religion, compared to 39% who believed the U.S. should not declare Christianity the state religion or promote Christian moral values. A plurality (44%) sided with a third option: the U.S. should not declare Christianity its official faith, but it should still promote Christian values.

When asked whether the Bible should have influence over U.S. laws, respondents were evenly split: 49% said the Bible should have “a great deal” of or “some” influence, while 51% said it should have “not much” or “no influence.”

But things looked different when Pew asked an additional question of those who supported a Bible-based legal structure: If the Bible and the will of the people come into conflict, which should prevail? Not quite two-thirds of that group — or 28% of Americans overall — said the Bible, but more than a third of the group (or 19% of the U.S. overall) said the will of the people should win out.

“28% of Americans say the Bible should prevail if Bible and the people’s will conflict” (Graphic courtesy Pew Research Center)

Here again, opinions have remained largely static, with researchers noting the numbers “have remained virtually unchanged over the past four years.”

Respondents were also asked whether they believed the Bible currently has influence over U.S. laws, with a majority (57%) agreeing it has at least some. But there were notable differences among religious groups: White evangelicals (48%) and Black Protestants (40%) were the least likely to say the Bible has at least some influence on U.S. law, compared to slight majorities of white non-evangelical Protestants (56%) and both white and Hispanic Catholics (52% for both). The religiously unaffiliated (70%), Jewish Americans (73%), atheists (86%) and agnostics (83%) were the most likely to agree that the Bible is a significant factor in the U.S. legal system.

The survey polled 12,693 U.S. adults from Feb. 13-25.

COVERING UP CELIBACIES FAILURE

Polish Catholics get a new leader as the church struggles to reckon with sexual abuse

A number of Poland's archbishops and bishops have retired or stepped down, with the Vatican's approval, for ignoring or trying to cover up abuses cases and for downplaying the trauma of the victims

.
FILE - The Jasna Gora Monastery, Poland’s most revered Catholic shrine, during a sunset in Czestochowa, Poland, on Sept. 23, 2023. The leaders of Poland’s influential Catholic Church on Thursday, March 14, 2024 chose moderate Archbishop Tadeusz Wojda to be their new principal, at a time when the church is still struggling to reckon with the abuse of minors by some Polish clergy, while the number of Poles going to church has fallen sharply. (AP Photo/Michal Dyjuk, File)

March 15, 2024
By Associated Press

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The leaders of Poland’s influential Catholic Church on Thursday chose moderate Archbishop Tadeusz Wojda to be their new principal, at a time when the church is still struggling to reckon with the abuse of minors by some Polish clergy, while the number of Poles going to church has fallen sharply.

At a two-day conference, bishops and archbishops elected Gdansk Archpishop Wojda, 67, to replace the conservative Archbp. Stanislaw Gądecki, of Poznan, as the head of the Polish Episcopate, for a five-year term, a communique said.

More than 90% of Poles, a nation of some 38 million, are still officially members of the Catholic Church, but figures from 2022 showed less than a third of Catholics attended mass, according to the church’s statistical institute.

For 27 years, from 1990 until 2017, Wojda served at the Vatican’s Congregation for the Evangelizations of Peoples, during the terms of three popes: Polish-born John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis. He was then appointed archbishop of Bialystok, in eastern Poland, bordering Belarus. In 2021, he was made archbishop of Gdansk.

During his tenure in Bialystok, when thousands of migrants arrived at the border with Belarus, Wojda called for openness and tolerance, but also stressed that borders must be protected. At that time he also spoke strongly against equality parades of the LGBT+ community in the region and said homosexuality was a “sin.”

Observers do not expect Wojda to change the Church’s strongly defensive course in the face of revealed cases of abuse of minors by priests.

A number of Poland’s archbishops and bishops have retired or stepped down, with the Vatican’s approval, for ignoring or trying to cover up abuses cases and for downplaying the trauma of the victims.

In some of the cases, the perpetrators have been indicted in court cases and ordered to pay damages to the victims. In a recent case, the diocese of Kalisz paid 300,000 zlotys ( $76,000) to the victim of a pedophile priest, in September.

The previous right-wing government forged close ties with the Church and supported some of its institutions financially, winning the gratitude of many believers. That government was also of similar mind with the Church on condemning abortion and promoting traditional family values.

The current pro-European Union government is seeking to cut the Church’s links to politics and also to limit its privileged financial position that exempts the church from taxation.

Historically, the Catholic Church has been held in high esteem by Poles, having been close to the nation and supporting its culture and freedom drives during the country’s division in the 19th century, during World War II and during more than 40 years of Moscow-controlled communist rule, until 1989.

Unexpected defeat of referendums shows growing power of Ireland’s traditional Catholics

At a Mass said in Latin on Sunday (March 10), Ireland’s traditional Catholics declared political victory, days after a pair of referendums aimed at secularizing the Irish Constitution were unexpectedly and resoundingly defeated.

People attend a Latin Mass at St. Kevin's Church, Harrington Street, in Dublin, March 10, 2024. (Photo by Daniel O'Connor)

March 13, 2024
By Daniel O'Connor


DUBLIN (RNS) — At a Mass said in Latin on Sunday (March 10), Ireland’s traditional Catholics declared political victory, days after a pair of referendums aimed at secularizing the Irish Constitution were unexpectedly and resoundingly defeated.

On Friday, the Irish government put two measures to a vote that would have extended the rights of unmarried couples in the country’s constitution and removed language defining women’s roles “within the home.” Both had been widely expected to pass despite enjoying little debate in the Dail, or Irish parliament, and after a rubber stamp by all three of the Irish Republic’s main political parties.

Both proposals failed, even in progressive Dublin. When all votes were counted, 67.7% of voters had rejected the family amendment, while 73.9% rejected the measure dealing with women’s roles, referred to as the care amendment. Turnout was 44.4%.

On Sunday, as pundits and reporters struggled to explain the most strongly rejected referendum in the republic’s history, roughly 200 traditional Catholics, many in their 30s and 40s, gathered at St. Kevin’s Church, Harrington Street, one of the few places in the city where the traditional, pre-Vatican II Latin Mass is still celebrated, for a triumphant celebration and a redoubt of conservative Catholics.

RELATED: Pope says traditionalist Catholics ‘gag’ church reforms

Even as a much smaller crowd arrived for the noon English-language Mass, those who had attended the 10:30 a.m. Latin Mass — men in tweed jackets and women in long skirts and white, floral head coverings — packed into the tight parish hall for tea, still buzzing with delight at the vote.

Sign for a voting location in Dublin, Ireland. (Photo by Daniel O’Connor)

The Latin Mass was largely done away with by the Second Vatican Council, when bishops meeting in Rome from 1962-1965 instituted Masses in local languages. However, some traditional Catholics remain drawn to the old Latin rite that dates to the 1500s.

That rite, which was allowed to be said more widely under Pope Benedict XVI, has become a flashpoint under Pope Francis, who in 2021 barred priests from saying it without permission from their bishops. Traditionalists have seen it as a symbol of the larger battle in the church over matters such as LGBT inclusion and the roles of women.

This divide was on display at the entrance to St. Kevin’s, in copies of Catholic Voice, a traditionalist newspaper whose latest issue looks forward to St. Patrick’s Day on March 17 while urging Irish Catholics to have the “courage” to declare that “liberalism is a sin” and deriding the “myths created by the homosexualist movement.” In a time when the pope is allowing priests to bless people in LGBTQ unions, the paper maintained that those who do not oppose “disordered sexuality” are “straddling Satan’s fence.”

The message that Catholic values are under threat from within the church has hit home in Ireland, where society was overwhelmingly Catholic a generation ago. As of 2022, Catholics made up just 69% of the population, down sharply from 79% in 2016. Weekly Mass attendance among Catholics hovers around one-third nationally, down from over 90% in the 1970s.

Accompanying this transformation have been referendums in which the Irish have legalized divorce (1995), gay marriage (2015) and abortion (2018).

But references to both marriage as a fundamental societal unit and to the roles of women in the home will now stay in the constitution. “It’s a great result for women, for mothers, for the homes and for marriage,” said Maria Steen, a prominent conservative activist. “And I think it’s a real rejection of the government’s attempt to, you know, delete all of that from the constitution.”

Steen ran a brief campaign that framed the removal of motherhood from the constitution as both sexist and anti-Catholic. She said Friday’s election result was a sign that the Irish had “gratitude” for motherhood.

St. Kevin’s Church, Harrington Street, in Dublin, Ireland, Sunday, March 10, 2024

. (Photo by Daniel O’Connor)

At St. Kevin’s, Michelle McGrath, a conservatively dressed woman in her 40s, said she was unsurprised by the vote result. She attributed it in part to the vagueness of the proposals, which would have equated marriage with other “durable” relationships. “Most people were confused about what it was, really,” said McGrath. “I don’t know what I’m being asked here.”

Confusion about what would be deemed durable relationships seemed to doom the referendum on marriage. In a televised debate on March 5 between Steen and Ireland’s deputy prime minister, or Tanaiste, Micheál Martin, he suggested that the court would decide what constituted durability, which would determine parental rights and inheritances.

McGrath said deeper frustrations were also at play. Steen and the “No” campaign suggested repeatedly that the broadened relationship laws would have facilitated greater immigration into Ireland, which has become increasingly controversial in the once demographically homogenous republic.

“People are starting to find their courage again in Ireland, and the people who’ve been silenced for a very long time are starting to call out the obvious injustices going on,” McGrath said. “The Irish have been put paddy-last, to use the pun, in their own nation. They have been sent to the back of the queue while minorities get the majority.”

Ireland, red, in western Europe. (Image courtesy Wikipedia/Creative Commons)

RELATED: The Catholic Church’s crash in Poland may follow ‘the Irish scenario’

Meanwhile, Shane Duffley, an early-middle-aged man with an intense stare, said the proposal on women’s roles was “messing with Irish mammies.”

“You don’t mess with Irish women,” he said firmly, eliciting strong nods from two friends — one a European immigrant with a small child in tow and the other a tall Irishman who, like many younger traditional Latin Mass Catholics, homeschools his kids.

Maggie, a middle-aged woman who declined to give her last name, said the liberalization of Ireland had “radicalized” the country. “Ireland has changed a lot in my lifetime,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean that everything that the government proposes is something that people accept.”

Alabama’s IVF protection law redefines embryonic personhood

A process that is taking place across the country.

In this Oct. 2, 2018, file photo, containers holding frozen embryos and sperm are stored in liquid nitrogen at a fertility clinic in Fort Myers, Fla. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled on Feb. 16, 2024, that frozen embryos can be considered children under state law, a ruling critics said could have sweeping implications for fertility treatments. The decision was issued in a pair of wrongful death cases brought by three couples who had frozen embryos destroyed in an accident at a fertility clinic. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky, File)

Spiritual Politics

March 13, 2024
By Mark Silk


(RNS) — Shortly before the Alabama House and Senate voted to give IVF providers civil and criminal immunity in the case of lost or damaged embryos last Thursday (March 7), leaders of an array of organizations that oppose abortion sent Gov. Kay Ivey a letter begging her to veto the bill. (She didn’t.)

“It is an indisputable scientific fact that human life begins at the moment of fertilization,” the letter declares. “The moment of fertilization, when an individual human zygote is formed, marks the starting point of each human being’s life.”

That’s true enough, but in no way dispositive (as pro-lifers like to claim) when it comes to the legal status of a fertilized egg outside (or inside) a womb, or an embryo at any stage of development for that matter.

As a matter of law, the issue is not whether a fertilized egg is a human life but whether it is considered a person. And if a person, then with the same rights and protections as a newborn? A teenager? An adult? A corporation? None of the above? These are not questions that embryological science can answer.

The Feb. 16 decision of the Alabama Supreme Court that prompted the passage of the in vitro fertilization immunity law determined that a frozen embryo is a person (a child) for purposes of civil litigation under the state’s 152-year-old Wrongful Death of a Minor Act but not for purposes of criminal prosecution. By immunizing IVF providers in both legal arenas, the new law dismisses all but the out-of-pocket cost of creating the frozen embryo to the progenitors, limiting their ability to recover for its damage or death to “compensatory damages calculated as the price paid for the impacted in vitro cycle.”

The anti-abortionists’ letter to Ivey stresses the need for greater protections for frozen embryos but is unspecific about what those protections should be, presumably because the signatories are not all on the same page regarding IVF.

Thus, Stephanie Smith, president and CEO of the conservative Alabama Policy Institute, said in a recent podcast that she supports IVF and that her organization favors legislation modeled on a 1986 Louisiana law that defines a fertilized egg as a “juridical person” unless it fails to develop over a 36-hour period. If the fertilized egg does develop (regardless of whether it is considered medically viable), it cannot be intentionally destroyed, sold or used for medical research.

(Over time, Louisiana IVF facilities have adopted the practice of shipping frozen embryos to other states, where they may be destroyed without running afoul of Louisiana law — rather like a Louisiana woman going out of state to procure an abortion.)

By contrast, Ryan T. Anderson, the Catholic president of the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center, appears to disapprove of IVF per se, even as he recognizes that the political winds in America today are all in its favor. Banning IVF altogether would be the best way to protect fertilized eggs for those who adhere to Catholic doctrine, which opposes IVF as a violation of both natural law and revelation.

With respect to the former, I’ll defer to an old Jesuit friend who quips, “What do you get when you cross Tony Soprano with a natural law philosopher? Someone who makes you an offer you can’t understand.”

As for revelation, the closest the Bible comes to defining the legal status of an embryo is in the 20th chapter of the Book of Exodus, verses 22-25, which reads (in a literal translation of the Hebrew):

And if men strive together, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart, and yet no harm follow, he shall be surely fined, according as the woman’s husband shall lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine. But if any harm follow, then thou shalt give life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

The traditional scholarly consensus has been that “the fruit depart” refers to a miscarriage, making the fetus not a person but a species of property whose loss incurs a monetary payment (in modern terms, a civil remedy). The “harm” therefore refers only to the woman, with the biblical range of criminal penalties depending on the extent of her injury (up to and including death).

In recent years this interpretation has been vigorously contested, but it is effectively mirrored in English common law, which considers an embryo to be neither a human being nor a legal person. That, like the rest of common law, is the default setting for U.S. law.

But under the influence of faith-based opposition to abortion, many U.S. states have overridden the common law rule and defined embryos as legal persons. Alabama did so in 2006, amending its criminal code to include in its definition of personhood “an unborn child in utero at any stage of development, regardless of viability.”

Advocates for abortion rights argue that measures like Alabama’s IVF law are mere stopgaps and that sooner or later the issue of defining embryos as persons will need to be addressed head-on. As U.S. Rep. Chris England, a Tuscaloosa Democrat, told The New York Times last week, “We have to confront the elephant in the room.”

I’m not so sure.

There are states that define embryos as persons from the moment of conception that permit abortions for weeks after fertilization, in cases of rape and incest, and where the life of the mother is at risk — as well as exempting women who procure abortions from criminal prosecution and immunizing IVF providers from civil and criminal liability should the embryo be destroyed.

Meanwhile, of course, the people in a series of such states have voted by large margins to permit women to obtain abortions.

This is not to say that it means nothing to define an embryo as a person. It’s to say that doing so doesn’t in itself establish what such personhood is. And as Americans in Alabama and across the country fight it out, what’s clear is that embryonic personhood will be unlike any other.

TAX THE CHURCH***

A Wisconsin ruling on Catholic Charities raises the bar for religious tax exemptions

U.S. religious institutions enjoy tax exemptions, most notably from property taxes. Debate has raged for decades over whether the exemptions are fair.

The entrance to the Wisconsin Supreme Court chambers in the state Capitol in Madison, Wis. (AP Photo/Todd Richmond)

March 14, 2024
By Todd Richmond

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Exemptions that allow religious organizations to avoid paying Wisconsin’s unemployment tax don’t apply to a Catholic charitable organization because its on-the-ground operations aren’t primarily religious, a divided state Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

The outcome of the case, which drew attention and concern from religious groups around the country, raises the bar for all religions to show that their charity arms deserve such exemptions in the state. The Catholic organization’s attorneys immediately promised to appeal directly to the U.S. Supreme Court. If that court agrees to hear the case, any ruling could have broad national implications.

The Wisconsin court ruled 4-3 that the Superior-based Catholic Charities Bureau and its subentities’ motivation to help older, disabled and low-income people stems from Catholic teachings but that its actual work is secular.

“In other words, they offer services that would be the same regardless of the motivation of the provider, a strong indication that the sub-entities do not ‘operate primarily for religious purposes,’” Justice Ann Walsh Bradley wrote for the majority.

Religious groups around the country are watching the case, including Catholic Conferences in Illinois, Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota, the American Islamic Congress, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, the Sikh Coalition, and the Jewish Coalition for Religious Liberty.

“The Wisconsin Supreme Court got this case dead wrong,” said Eric Rassbach, vice president and senior counsel at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a law firm that is representing Catholic Charities and its subentities. “CCB is religious, whether Wisconsin recognizes that fact or not.”

The firm will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, said Sarah Buckley, a Becket spokesperson.

U.S. religious institutions enjoy tax exemptions, most notably from property taxes. Debate has raged for decades over whether the exemptions are fair.

Supporters say that the exemptions rightfully extend from the constitutional separation of church and state and that religious institutions would struggle without them. Opponents counter they amount to government support for religion and unfairly shift tax burdens to others. They also maintain that churches have grown increasingly political in violation of their tax-exempt status.

The dispute over Wisconsin unemployment tax exemptions is the first of its kind, said Patrick Elliott, an attorney for the Freedom From Religion Foundation. But challenges to religious property tax exemptions have been fairly common, with most judges finding that the organizations must use the land for religious purposes, not just own it, to qualify for exemptions.

Wisconsin law requires employers to pay an unemployment tax that is used to fund benefits for workers who lose their jobs. The law exempts religious organizations from the tax.

Every Catholic diocese in Wisconsin has a Catholic Charities entity that serves as that diocese’s social ministry arm.

The Catholic Charities Bureau is the Superior diocese’s entity. The bureau manages nonprofit organizations that run more than 60 programs designed to help older or disabled people, children with special needs, low-income families, and people suffering from disasters, regardless of their religion, according to court documents.

The bureau and four of its subentities have been arguing in court for five years that the religious exemption from the unemployment tax should apply to them because they’re motivated by Catholic teachings that call for helping others.

A state appeals court in February 2023 decided the subentities failed to show their activities are motivated by religion. Judge Lisa Stark wrote that the subentities’ mission statements call for serving everyone, regardless of their religions.

As for the bureau itself, it has a clear religious motivation but isn’t directly involved in any religiously oriented activities, she wrote. The outcome might have been different, Stark added, if the church actually ran the bureau and its subentities. Their workers would then be considered church employees, she said.

The bureau and the subentities asked the Wisconsin Supreme Court to review that decision. But the court’s four-justice liberal majority upheld the appellate ruling on almost the same rationale.

“The record demonstrates that CCB and the sub-entities, which are organized as separate corporations apart from the church itself, neither attempt to imbue program participants with the Catholic faith nor supply any religious materials to program participants or employees,” Ann Walsh Bradley wrote.

She rejected the bureau’s arguments that evaluating a religious organization’s motivations and whether its activities are sufficiently religious amounts to an excessive state entanglement with religion that violates the constitutional separation of church and state. That separation doesn’t prohibit all government inquiries into a religious organization, and tax-exemption decisions require investigation, she wrote.

Justice Rebecca Bradley, one of the court’s three conservative justices, began her dissent by quoting a Bible verse that calls for rendering unto God the things that are God’s. She accused the majority of rewriting the exemption statutes to deprive Catholic Charities of the exemption, “rendering unto the state that which the law says belongs to the church.”

“The majority’s misinterpretation also excessively entangles the government in spiritual affairs, requiring courts to determine what religious practices are sufficiently religious under the majority’s unconstitutional test,” Rebecca Bradley wrote. “The majority says secular entities provide charitable services, so such activities aren’t religious at all, even when performed by Catholic Charities.”

Elliott, the Freedom From Religion Foundation attorney, called the ruling a win. If the charity groups had prevailed, the next step would be arguments to exempt religious hospitals and colleges, such as Marquette University, from paying the unemployment tax, he said.

“It’s really a win for employees who work for religious organizations,” Elliott said. “They get coverage under the Wisconsin unemployment system.”

Buckley, the spokesperson for the law firm representing the bureau, said the constitutional issue will be the basis for the U.S. Supreme Court appeal. Typically, litigants appeal rulings from states’ highest courts invoking federal questions directly to the U.S. Supreme Court.

___

*** TEMPLE, MOSQUE,SYNAGOGUE, ETC.

Every week is World Interfaith Harmony Week for devotees of Swami Vivekananda

As religious conflict and disharmony rage on elsewhere in the world, the interfaith teachings of Swami Vivekananda are evergreen to these devotees.

ONE OF THE SECRET MASTERS OF THE A.A. / O.T.O

People attend a service at the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York, Feb. 4, 2024. (RNS photo/Richa Karmarkar)

February 7, 2024
By Richa Karmarkar

NEW YORK (RNS) — At a Sunday morning service on Sunday (Feb. 4), a priest gave a sermon, a choir sang devotional hymns and a congregation bowed heads in a joint prayer.

It was a typical Sunday for these faithful New Yorkers. Yet rather than a church, this service took place at a spiritual home meant for believers under any name, from Christians to Hindus to self-professed “truth-seekers.”

The Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York, built for the revered Indian monastic who brought the interfaith teachings of Vedantic Hinduism to America and his guru, is the gathering place for devotees of his philosophy, which accepts every faith as a “valid means for its own followers to realize the Truth.”

“Swami Vivekananda redeemed religion for us,” said Swami Yuktatmananda, a monk of the Ramakrishna Order and the current spiritual head of the center, in his sermon. “He made religion real.”

Images of Buddha, Mary and Jesus, and Hindu gods covered the walls of the center’s chapel room, which was started in 1933 by Swami Nikhilananda as a “Vedanta temple for universal worship.” On this special service for Vivekananda’s birthday according to the Hindu calendar, Yuktatmananda was giving a talk about Vivekananda’s views on religion.

A variety of religious imagery adorns the walls of the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York, Feb. 4, 2024. (RNS photo/Richa Karmarkar)

“His three most productive years were spent in the United States,” said Yuktatmananda, speaking of the sage’s time sharing philosophies in English with the Western world, translating the “language of angels to the language of man.”

“We are here as a result of his selfless labor,” he added. “He has promised to be with us until the whole world knows it is one with God.”
RELATED: On Vivekananda’s 160th birthday, female monastics venerate the ‘mother’ of his movement

Vivekananda, who lived from 1863-1902, gave dozens of speeches introducing Vedantic spirituality at the turn of the century to audiences across the U.S. and Europe. His speech at the 1893 Parliament of World Religions in Chicago, in which he famously addressed his audience as “Sisters and Brothers of America,” is widely remembered for its preaching on “universal toleration” and the oneness of humanity.

To the devotees at this spiritual sanctuary, the world’s religions are separated only by rituals, dogmas, books and doctrines, which are “secondary, nonessential details,” according to Vivekananda. To him, says Yuktatmananda, the essence of religion is manifesting one’s own innate divine nature, whether it be through Prophet Muhammad, Jesus Christ or Lord Krishna.

“Religion is realization that must be lived, not dispersed,” said the monk, referencing Vivekananda’s teachings. “It is made of tangible experience, not mechanical rituals and theological debates.”

Swami Vivekananda in Chicago during the Parliament of the World’s Religions in September 1893. (Photo courtesy of Creative Commons)

True interfaith harmony, said Vivekananda, is acceptance, not mere tolerance, and seeing both God and one’s self in every person. On World Interfaith Harmony Week, this evergreen message especially resonates with the longtime devotees of the center.

Keith Martinez, a New York native, was raised Roman Catholic. As a freshman in college in the ’80s, Martinez happened across a book that introduced to him Eastern philosophical traditions such as Hinduism and Buddhism. Then a student of physics, concerned with “finding the truth,” Martinez recalls immediately thinking, “Oh my God, this makes so much sense.”

“When you take a step back and learn about another religion, you say, ‘Oh, they’re attempting the same thing,'” said Martinez. “I thought, ‘God is really trying to satisfy the needs of everybody,’ and that’s the way he does it, through these different religions.”

It took just 10 minutes into the first sermon at the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center by then-leader Swami Adiswarananda, says Martinez, before he realized this was the path for him. He saw a man who was “speaking from spiritual experience,” he says, unlike the ministers and priests he had known before.

“I believe that a true spiritual man, a true holy person, is meant to come and help,” said Martinez. “As a result, God gives him the right words to say. After all, we are all one, we are all brothers and sisters. These leaders are serving the God that’s within each of us.”

Now a director and choir manager at the center, Martinez played an instrumental part in the opening of the Vivekananda Cottage at Thousand Island Park in upstate New York, where Swami Vivekananda spent seven weeks in meditation.

Martinez credits his friend, mathematician Yogesh Bansal, with bringing him here some 30 years back. The two are still close, attending services together every Sunday.

The Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York, Feb. 4, 2024. 

(RNS photo/Richa Karmarkar)

Bansal, originally from India, says he was once praised by Swami Adiswarananda for bringing the most amount of people to the center from other faiths and cultures. He notes it can be difficult for many, especially those raised in other faith traditions, to grasp such abstract concepts of spirituality, such as worshipping the “inner light” that shines inside everyone.

“These are all ideas and concepts, but you have to genuinely feel that ‘Yes, Muhammad is also God,'” said Bansal. “How does that happen? That happens when you see God within yourself.

“The point is how you feel within, and how your heart and mind rushes toward God,” he added.

Diana Cooper, a retired nurse, found the center after walking past it one day. A cradle Catholic, Cooper was seeking more, traveling through Jainism to reach the Vedanta tradition, which she calls “the real deal.” In coming for the past 20 years, Cooper says she has realized more and more that “we are all souls.”

“There are other God men. It’s not just Ramakrishna, it’s not just Buddha, it’s not just Christ. Many come at different times,” she said. “This whole place is the oneness of religion.”

Cooper agrees with Bansal that where and when someone was raised has the highest impact on their beliefs. But it is up to us, she says, to eliminate the “us versus them” mentality between religious groups and start to see each person’s journey as leading to the same God.

“Nobody has the exact same karma, so every road is going to be a little bit different,” she said. “Everybody has their path. For me, this is it.”

For Mansi Mehta, the path to Vivekananda was forged at age 7. A singer in the choir and humanitarian worker, 36-year-old Mehta says the swami’s words have been the “guiding force” behind her decision-making for all of these years. The teachings about the world, she says, remind her there is always something bigger than herself.

“No matter what path we’re on, whether it’s an actual religion or our own path, at the end of the day it’s supposed to lead to the same goal,” she said. “There’s no right or wrong religion, it’s just a belief, and it’s a feeling within ourselves.”

As the service ended with a prayer, salutations were given to “all the prophets of the past and the future.” And the choir sang a rendition of Vivekananda follower George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord,” emphasizing the Hebrew word of praise “Hallelujah” and the Hindu mantra of “Hare Rama, Hare Krishna.”

To Martinez, the spirituality he found through Vivekananda is the key to unlocking harmony across the world, especially as religious conflict and intolerance rage on.

“It’s always gonna be an individual thing,” he said. “Each person has to make a difference. As Michael Jackson says, it starts with the man in the mirror.”

RELATED: Symposium marks 130th anniversary of Swami Vivekananda’s arrival in the United States

In ‘Bob Marley: One Love’ film, what’s his faith? And why is marijuana deemed holy to the Rastafari?
The Rastafari message was spread across the world in the 1970s by Marley and Peter Tosh, another Jamaican reggae legend and globally known Rastafari.
Bob Marley Wikipedia
March 14, 2024
ByLuis Andres Henao


NEW YORK (AP) — The biopic “Bob Marley: One Love” has been a box-office hit in the United States and several other countries. The film, starring Kingsley Ben-Adir, is focused on the Rastafari legend’s story during the making of his 1977 album “Exodus” while leading up to a momentous concert in his native Jamaica.

The Rastafari faith is rooted in the Caribbean island in the 1930s. Its message was spread across the world in the 1970s by Marley — the faith’s most famous exponent. For decades, Rastafari have been prosecuted for their ritualistic use of marijuana. Some of those laws have eased, granting Rastafari sacramental authorization to grow the marijuana they deem sacred.

Here is a quick look at the faith’s beliefs and history:


WHAT DO RASTAFARI BELIEVE?

The Rastafari faith is rooted in 1930s Jamaica, growing as a response by Black people to white colonial oppression. The beliefs are a melding of Old Testament teachings and a desire to return to Africa.

Both are crucial to Marley’s lyrics and worldview. In “ The Bible and Bob Marley: Half the Story Has Never Been Told,” author Dean A. MacNeil writes that Marley’s personal Bible was a King James version. It included on its cover a photocopied image of the late Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie, who is worshipped by most Rastafari.

The Rastafari message was spread across the world in the 1970s by Marley and Peter Tosh, another Jamaican reggae legend and globally known Rastafari.

In the film “One Love,” the actor who plays Marley mentions “Jah” several times.

That’s because Rastafari’s personal relationship with “Jah,” or God, is considered central to the faith.

Rastafari reject materialist values and often practice a strict oneness with nature. They also let their hair grow, uncombed, into dreadlocks.

In several scenes in the film — produced with the involvement of the Marley estate — Marley sings to large crowds of people who wave Rastafari flags in the green, gold and red colors of the faith.

WHY DO RASTAFARI USE SACRAMENTAL MARIJUANA?

Rastafari followers believe the use of marijuana is directed in biblical passages and that the “holy herb” induces a meditative state and brings them closer to the divine. The faithful smoke it as a sacrament in chalice pipes or cigarettes called “spliffs,” add it to plant-based organic stews and place it in fires as a burnt offering.

For decades, many have been jailed and endured racial and religious profiling by law enforcement because of their marijuana use. Many also were treated as second-class citizens across the Caribbean islands, looked down on for their dreadlocks and use of marijuana.

WHO BROUGHT MARIJUANA TO THE CARIBBEAN?

“Ganja,” as marijuana is known in the Caribbean, has a long history in Jamaica, and its arrival predates the Rastafari faith. Indentured servants from India brought the cannabis plant to the island in the 19th century, and it gained popularity as a medicinal herb.

As public opinion and policy continues to shift across the world toward the legalization of marijuana for both medical and recreational purposes, Rastafari are demanding for broader relaxation to curb persecution and ensure freedom of worship.

Some nations, including the Caribbean nation of Antigua & Barbuda, have granted the Rastafari authorization to grow and smoke the herb that they deem holy.

WHO IS HAILE SELASSIE?

In one of the first scenes of the film, Marley mentions this name. That’s because most of the many Rastafari sects worship Selassie. This is rooted in Jamaican Black nationalist leader Marcus Garvey’s 1920s prediction that a “Black king shall be crowned” in Africa, ushering in a “day of deliverance.”

When an Ethiopian prince named Ras Tafari, who took the name Haile Selassie I, became emperor in 1930, the descendants of the enslaved in Jamaica took it as proof that Garvey’s prophecy was being fulfilled. When Selassie visited Jamaica in 1966, he was greeted by adoring crowds, and some Rastafari insisted miracles and other mystical occurrences took place during his visit to the island.


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Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

Ex-Catholics in Rome reconnect with roots, spirituality in paganism

As Romans search for alternatives to Catholicism, some have turned to Jupiter, Minerva and Juno.

Luca Fizzarotti, center, pours water on hands during a ritual with the Communitas Populi Romani, Feb. 10, 2024, near the Forum in Rome. 

(RNS photo/Claire Giangravè)

February 21, 2024
By Claire Giangravé

VATICAN CITY (RNS) — Disillusioned by their experiences in Catholicism, some Romans are turning to paganism and finding a connection to their roots through worshipping the gods of antiquity, whom they see as more welcoming than the church.

“Rome is pagan,” Pope Francis told members of the Roman clergy during a closed-door meeting Jan. 14, when he urged them to consider the city a mission territory. Asked about the pope’s surprising words a few weeks later, the head of the department for catechesis of the Diocese of Rome, the Rev. Andrea Camillini, admitted: “Rome is at the same time pagan and the city of the pope: It’s a paradoxical city.”

The number of practicing Catholics in Italy has plummeted after the COVID-19 lockdowns to an all-time low. The Italian National Institute of Statistics found that only 19% of Italians were practicing Catholics in 2022, compared with 36% in the previous 10 years. The number of people who “never practice” their faith has doubled to 31% in the historically Catholic country.

While the church grapples with the causes behind the emptying pews, some who have left their Catholic faith behind are searching for other spiritual outlets. An eclectic group of Romans who gathered near the ancient Forum on a windy morning on Feb. 10 have turned to Juno, Jupiter and Apollo to find answers.

“I was a practicing Christian Catholic for many years. I was a catechist,” Luca Fizzarotti, who recently started attending the ancient Roman rituals, told Religion News Service. “Then I had a spiritual crisis when I moved in with my wife. I had a very bad experience and had to leave my church,” he said.

A computer programmer, Fizzarotti fell in love with a woman who believes in Kemetic Orthodoxy, based on the ancient Egyptian religious faith. “In the beginning I could not really understand this, then as I slowly learned about the pagan community, I found a way to live out my spirituality,” he said.

Incense burns during a ritual with the Communitas Populi Romani, Feb. 10, 2024, near the Forum in Rome. (RNS photo/Claire Giangravè)

Paganism — though sometimes used as a derogatory shorthand for anyone who does not worship the Abrahamic god of Judaism, Islam and Christianity — is an umbrella term that encompasses a number of religious traditions, many of them polytheistic. Ancient Romans worshipped a pantheon of gods, mainly Jupiter, Juno, Apollo and Minerva, through rituals and observations with activities than included animal sacrifice and temple worship.

Fizzarotti was among a dozen people who gathered for the early February ritual, organized by the Communitas Populi Romani, a community started in 2013 by a group of young enthusiasts of Roman history, culture and religion.

In the beginning, the group focused on reenactments and history, but it slowly shifted toward becoming an officially recognized religious group. There are 20 or so members, said Donatella Ertola, who joined the group in 2015 and now organizes meetings three or four times a month in the places that are closest to the original temples spread across Rome.

“We all believe in the gods, we make rituals at home, we have devotion temples at home, we have our priests and officiants,” she told RNS, adding that this is a “niche community that has been growing recently.”

Communitas is hardly the only Roman religion organization in Rome or Italy. Groups like Pietas in Rome have larger memberships and even their own temples. According to a 2017 study by the Center for Studies on New Religions in Turin, the number of neopagans in Italy has grown to more than 230,000 people, a 143% increase over 10 years. In the United States there are 1.5 million pagans, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center survey, a significant increase compared with 134,000 in 2001.

The draw of the Roman religion is clear for many modern-day Italians, who view it as a way to reconnect with their ancient roots. Fascination with ancient Rome has also become a worldwide phenomenon. A social media trend last year found a staggering and surprising number of people — especially men — think about the ancient Roman Empire at least once a day.

“I was looking for something that monotheism didn’t give me,” said Antony Meloni, an airport construction worker. “I found in polytheism a new strength,” he added.

There is no religious text in the Roman religion, meaning faithful today must rely on what was written by people of the time. Communitas attempts to re-create the ancient rituals, without any human or animal sacrifice, of course, using ancient texts.

The group gathered that day to celebrate Juno Sospita, or Juno the Savior, whose temple once stood a few steps away, where the Church of St. Nickolas in Chains is located today. The original columns are still visible. She is usually shown as a warrior, lance in hand, and covered with goat skins and historically celebrated in February, considered a month of purification by the Romans, as winter turned to spring.

Communitas Populi Romani members use incense during a ritual on Feb. 10, 2024, near the Forum in Rome. (RNS photo/Claire Giangravè)

They follow the description of a ritual offered by Cato the Elder in the “De Agricultura.” It starts off with an offering to the local “genus,” or spirit, followed by ablutions with water and incense. During the central part of the ceremony, the “Favete Linguis,” faithful are asked to “hold their tongues” and quiet their minds.

Amid the chaos of Roman traffic and the occasional bark of their mascot — the dog Poldo, who has two different-colored eyes — the group shouted prayers in Latin. Two nuns, dressed in black, looked over suspiciously. Wearing a white veil, the officiant May Rega, scoffed with annoyance.

Rega was an active member of her church in Naples and sang in the choir, but she also drifted away from Catholicism due to ruptures with the church and its congregants. As an archaeologist, she loves how specific and detailed Roman religion is, forcing one to check sources, follow the ritual precisely, with no mistakes and with the appropriate citations.

She had carefully put together the flowers, scones and almond milk — because she could not find goat’s milk — for the ceremony and was annoyed when her boyfriend and concelebrant, Daniele Pieri, interrupted the ritual, forcing them to start over.

“When I met her, she said, ‘I am pagan and vegan,’ and I thought ‘Great! I am celiac!’” said Pieri, who works as a sound technician. Pieri left the Catholic Church after the parish priest insisted he could not be harmed by receiving Communion despite being celiac. He said he still has an admiration for Jesus: “If Jesus had prayed to Jupiter, he would have been even cooler.”

For Pieri, Roman religion is a question of identity. “I love this city. I was born in this city, and I want to die in this city,” he said. “When I began to study Roman history and these cults, I found my roots. This is where I come from. This is who I am.”

May Rega, center, speaks during a Communitas Populi Romani gathering on Feb. 10, 2024, near the Forum in Rome.

 (RNS photo/Claire Giangravè)

Taking turns, the members of the Communitas made their personal offering to the goddess. Unlike other pagan communities in Rome, the group doesn’t have any initiation rite, and everyone is welcome to join. “The Roman religion is not about saying these are my gods, and there are no others,” Pieri explained.

Chiara Aliboni is a student of history, anthropology and religions from a “very Catholic family” in Perugia was also attending the ceremony. She said she had her conversion to Orthodox Kemetism when she learned about the ancient Egyptians. “I thought, if I am to follow any religion, it’s this one,” she said. While hesitant at first, she found in the Communitas a welcoming home for her beliefs.

Fizzarotti was also pleasantly surprised by the openness of this religion compared with his experiences in the Catholic Church. “I am drawing closer to this community. I am finding many answers that I have been searching for for years,” he said after the rite was completed, and the group reveled in wine and an improvised banquet.

“I am feeling emotional. I deeply felt today’s ritual. It was truly beautiful,” he added.

RELATED: The keeper of the Vatican’s secrets is retiring. Here’s what he wants you to know

The group members gathered their things, leaving nothing behind but the lingering scent of incense. They spoke of plans for creating a temple one day just outside Rome and of upcoming gatherings with other pagan groups. Their faith, believed to have been long lost, is still very much alive, they said.

For Camillini, as the number of Catholics dwindles in the Eternal City, he has had to face reality. “It’s time to give up the delusion of omnipotence, of evangelizing Rome, and abandon the idea of making Rome into a Christian city. It’s no longer our objective and it never was,” he said.