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Who will next wear the shoes of the fisherman?   By Mary Ann Mueller VOL Special Correspondent www.virtueonline.org April 21, 2025   Sede Vacante: Pope Francis has died.   “Dearest brothers and sisters, with deep sorrow, I must announce the death of our Holy Father Francis,” Cardinal Kevin Farrell prefaced Monday (April 21) morning from the Vatican. “At 7:35 this morning, The Bishop of Rome, Francis, returned to the Father’s house. His entire life was dedicated to the service of the Lord and His church.”   Pope Francis’ death was not unexpected. He was in failing health since he came down with double pneumonia on Valentine's Day which landed him in the hospital for more than a month.   Even after he got out of the hospital, he never recovered his health, but he lasted until Easter when he was seen by the people taking what would be his final ride in his white Popemobile.   The Pope is dead. Such words were uttered Easter Monday morning by Cardinal Farrell, an American Catholic bishop who once was the IV Bishop of Dallas. Now as the Camerlengo of the Catholic Church he is the one who pronounced Pope Francis dead, defaced his papal ring to signify that Francis' reign is over, and announced the Pope’s death to the world. And, until a new pontiff is elected, the affairs of state for the Vatican City-State fall on his shoulders.   The Pope is dead. I've heard those words uttered six times. First in 1958 when Pope Pius XII died; in 1963 when Pope John XXIII died: twice in 1978 when Pope Paul died and quickly afterwards for Pope John Paul I, then again in 2005 when John Paul II died and again Easter Monday when Pope Francis died.   Pope-emeritus Benedict XVI died on New Year's Eve 2022, but he was not the sitting pope at the time. He abdicated his papal throne in 2013 to be followed by Francis.   On March 13, 2013 I was excited about Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio’s election as pope. He was seen as a humble, almost shy man from Buenos Aires, Argentina.   Around the same time Justin Welby was named the Archbishop of Canterbury, and many were excited about his elevation to the See of Canterbury. Both church leaders were enthroned days apart Francis on March 19 and Welby on March 21. They became friends.   But, alas, both Francis and Welby turned out to be disappointments with their reigns ending just months apart in 2025. Welby put down his crozier on January 6 which was his 69th birthday, and Francis died on April 21. And now both the See of Canterbury and the See of Rome are Sede Vacante. The question is: Who will fill these vacancies?   Both Francis and Welby brought turmoil to their branch of the universal church. Both tripped over the growing demands of LGBTQ ideology issues.   Now the Vatican enters into nine days of mourning. Then several days later, to allow for travel time for all the electing cardinals to arrive in Rome, the next conclave is supposed to start to elect a new pontiff – eventually a telltale puff of white smoke signifies that one of the gathered cardinals will trade in his red cassock for the white one.   Easter Monday the Italian media – La Repubblica and Il Messaggero – reported that Francis’ death is not attributable to lung issues reporting that the Pope apparently died of a stroke. However, the Vatican has stated that he succumbed to pneumonia.  Pray for repose of Pope Francis’ soul. Pray for the Roman Church. Pray for the conclave. Pray for the new pope, whomever he will be. Pray that the Holy Spirit gets His way and that “Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”   Mary Ann Mueller is a journalist living in Texas. She is a regular contributor to VirtueOnline.

By Dr. Jules Gomes THE STREAM Apr 21, 2025   The most controversial pontiff in living memory has just died at the age of 88.   Pope Francis – born in Argentina as Jorge Mario Bergoglio — passed away after a lengthy battle with thrombocytopenia blood disorder, a mild acute kidney injury, and renal insufficiency.   Like a Greek tragedy, Francis will be remembered as the pontiff who radiated a utopian vision of unifying the world under Friedrich Schiller’s rousing call of fratelli tutti (brothers all) — but left his own church fatally fractured.   Ironically, Francis hated President Donald Trump, but was himself a toweringly “Trumpian” personality — one people either loved or hated.   Millions of Catholics around the globe revered him as a prophet of mercy, an apostle of peace, and a spartan workaholic who rejected the pomp of the papal palace, choosing to live in the Santa Marta hostel instead.   They hailed his unflinching emphasis on social justice, equality, immigration, climate change, ecumenical outreach, interfaith dialogue, the decentralization of power, and his far-sighted chess maneuvers to include the marginalized, especially women, in the highest echelons of the church.   But his critics saw him as a Screwtape-like character in a white zucchetto — a Marxist wrecking ball scheming to dilute and eventually dissolve distinctive Catholic doctrine by turning the glittering wine of Catholicism into the tepid water of a bland Anglicanism.   DEEPLY POLARIZING   The pope’s cheerleaders portrayed him as the long-awaited messianic reformer who spoke truth to political power — and even in his final days, challenged their nemesis, Donald Trump, by egging the U.S. bishops to defy his efforts to deport illegal aliens.   For his detractors Francis was nothing short of Machiavellian — a manipulative micromanager, a megalomaniacal dictator, and a Neville Chamberlain redivivus who struck Faustian bargains with Islamic jihadists, globalist vaccine peddlers, pro-Palestinian antisemites, and Beijing’s communist nabobs while trading Catholicism for kitsch.   In the journalistic laundromat of dirty papal linen, Francis’s garments will be seen as indelibly stained by the favoritism he showed his friend Fr. Marko Ivan Rupnik — a celebrity artist accused of sexually abusing more than two dozen nuns — as well as covering over the crimes of high-profile clerical sex abusers.   Papal historians will remember him for his grandest ecclesiastical experiment — the amorphous Synod on Synodality — hailed by progressives as unprecedented and damned by conservatives as a Trojan virus designed to subvert Catholic teaching.   STRANGE OMENS   Traditionalist Catholics will forever despise Francis for Traditionis Custodes — the pope’s guillotine on the Traditional Latin Mass, and his unrelenting diatribes against their “rigidity,” “backwardness” and toxic tendency to “safeguard the ashes” of the past.   Social media wags will persist in portraying him as a temperamental windsock: from slapping the hand of an Asian woman to flinging poisoned javelins at paleo-conservative priests frocked up in laced vestments, and zealous faithful engaged in evangelism.   Francis’s ascension to the throne of the fisherman was an anomaly. The waters of the Tiber parted to make way for him only because his predecessor threw in the pontifical towel.   The gods made their displeasure over this seemingly arbitrary act felt: Lightning struck St. Peter’s Basilica twice on February 11, 2013, the day Pope Benedict XVI resigned. A year later, a crow and seagull savagely attacked two doves Francis released from the iconic window of the Apostolic Palace.   OBJECTIVES   What was Bergoglio hoping to accomplish as the 266th Roman pontiff? His first greeting to the world was a homely Buona Sera; would he change Church substance along with style? “I hope you don’t regret this later,” he jokingly told cardinals at his inauguration dinner in March 2013.   The next day, he ditched the papal Mercedes with the license plate SCV1 for a standard-issue black saloon, dumped the ermine-trimmed mozzetta and gold pectoral cross, traded red shoes for black, and quit the apostolic palace for the Casa Santa Martha hostel.   For the media, it was love at first sight; the modern Francis was virtue-signaling the qualities of Francis of Assisi. It seemed like the pope’s honeymoon with the chattering classes would last forever, with the media devouring his daily soundbites that veered dangerously off script, especially during high-altitude press conferences on the papal plane.   Francis, ad libbing on how atheists would go to Heaven and the existence of a “gay lobby” in the Vatican, confirmed that his would be a papacy of improvisation — and, adventurous, perhaps even risky, innovation.   And then on July 29, 2013, during an press conference on the plane while flying back from Brazil, he uttered five little words that would become the signature of his papacy: “Who am I to judge?” he said when asked about gay priests in the Church.   CEMENTING HIS LIBERAL LEGACY   As his health continued to fail, Francis devoted his attention to creating the optimal conditions for his successor to seal his legacy. In a series of consistories, the pope nominated cardinal-electors who align with his agenda on LGBT rights, synodality, climate change, migrant issues, and social justice, most recently in October 2024.   I suspect that Francis’s greatest achievement (depending on where one sits on the question of papal supremacy) was to perform a Samson-like suicidal feat and bring the bloated concept of the papacy crashing down for the sake of ecumenical unity.   In June, the Vatican’s Dicastery for Promoting Christian Unity released a 151-page document inelegantly titled “The Bishop of Rome: Primacy and Synodality in Ecumenical Dialogues and Responses to the Encyclical Ut Unum Sint.”   The dossier is a time bomb carefully calibrated to keep ticking until it detonates the theory and practice of papal supremacy in the Roman Catholic Church. It totally reverses the supremacist claims of Pope Pius IX, who at Vatican I declared that papal supremacy and universal jurisdiction are “supported by the clear witness of Holy Scripture.”   Pius IX’s claims were hotly contested by Archbishop Peter Kenrick of St. Louis, Missouri, who demonstrated that most of the church fathers did not believe that the “rock” of which Jesus spoke in Matthew 16:18 was the Apostle Peter. While Pius IX claimed “the primacy of Peter over the whole Church,” Francis admits that “the Pope is not, by himself, above the Church; but within it as one of the baptized.”   Progressives will regard Francis’s last will and testament as an act of supreme humility for the sake of Christian unity. Conservatives will view it as a betrayal of the doctrine that exclusively defines Catholic uniqueness and its claims to be the one, true Church.   Francis has succeeded in bequeathing to Catholics something they never had: a hermeneutic of suspicion that will, from this point forth, no longer accept papal pronouncements as authoritative or definitive. Even Martin Luther never have dreamt of achieving such a monumental feat.   In the post-Francis church, the question “Is the pope Catholic?” will no longer be the punchline to a joke.   Dr. Jules Gomes, (BA, BD, MTh, PhD), has a doctorate in biblical studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently a Vatican-accredited journalist based in Rome, he is the author of five books and several academic articles. Gomes lectured at Catholic and Protestant seminaries and universities and was canon theologian and artistic director at Liverpool Cathedral.

COMMENTARY   By David W. Virtue, DD www.virtueonline.org April 19, 2025   Someone asked me the other day just how long the whole issue of homosexuality will continue to consume the Anglican Communion. It’s a fair question and the short answer is, I don’t know. The long answer is, not forever and probably not for much longer.   We have been fighting this battle since (and before) Lambeth resolution 1:10 passed in 1998. The churches are weary of the whole discussion and the arguments with them. They are sick and tired of being asked or told that they must accept practicing homosexuals to all orders of ministry, or face being called homophobic and then tossed out of the church for not being inclusive.   The lines have been drawn. Those who favor pansexuality and the whole range of LGBTQ+ sexualities are on one side and those who oppose any change in Biblical marriage and Biblical sexual ethics and practice sit on the other side of the aisle. The aisle itself is like the crocodile-infested Nile River, cross it at your own risk.     Mainline churches which have embraced pansexuality are slowly withering and dying while those who stand on Scripture, history and reason are growing. Furthermore, there is overwhelming evidence that evangelical churches that demand something of their adherents are actually flourishing.   Because sexuality and identity are so closely linked, there is little to think anyone’s mind is going to be changed. Those committed to a progressive church mindset will fall on their sword to make and keep the changes the church has “progressed” too; and those who have never moved will likely never do so; though one or two, like the Hays father and son have done so. The same goes for the Campolo’s. But they are few and far between. The sides have been drawn up and we now await the outcome of history on how it will all turn out.   CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM   So, what will be the next big issue to fall on the Western church, (as in fact it is doing so even as I write.) I believe it is the growing confrontation between Christianity and Islam.   There are over two billion Muslims in the world today, making up roughly a quarter of the global population. The overwhelming majority, 87%-90%, are Sunni Muslims, while the remaining 10%-13% are Shia Muslims. These totals can be further broken down into minor heterodox sects, including Ismailis, Alawites, and Druze. They want a universal caliphate governed by Sharia Law and death to those who will not convert.   The West is facing an existential crisis. We are post-modern, post Christian, some say post truth, secular, materialistic, agnostic, atheist, greedy, lovers of money, angst-driven, with many hoping that a revived Christian nationalism will save us. While a handful of Christians are being cancelled, you have not, as the writer to the Hebrews says, “resisted to the point of shedding your blood.”   Meantime persecution haunts the Global South, with hundreds dying daily for their faith in countries like Nigeria and the South Sudan. A war in the Middle East has the potential to explode into a nuclear war if wiser heads don’t prevail.   But the Islamization of the West is the most troubling issue. England is fast succumbing to the siren call of Islam. The Church of England is a veritable joke (or lost cause) to most of the British public. The rest of Europe is fast becoming Islamic as refugees roll across the Mediterranean looking for a safe haven and a new life in what was once Christian Europe. The future looks bleak for European countries facing both Islam and a revived Russia at war with the Ukraine.   It is compounded with many thinking that Russia is more Christian than England and the Russian Orthodox Church chooses a ‘might is right’ mentality in the war on Ukraine, offering a robust Christianity now long gone in Western Europe. Islam also presents itself as a robust faith not made for feel-your-pain wimps, whiny self-reflection or narcissistic introversion.   In any eventuality, the central issue facing Christians will not be the joys of sodomy, but the uniqueness of Jesus. Is He truly the Son of God, savior of the world or something else?   We live in an age of growing religious pluralism, in which the uniqueness of Jesus Christ is being downplayed to meet the demands of political correctness and “the new tolerance.” We are now told that Jesus is not the way to God, but a way to God—one among many in the world. To suggest otherwise is to be ignorant, intolerant, insensitive, arrogant, fundamentalist, or just hopelessly out of touch with the enlightened consciousness of today’s world.   C.S. Lewis puts the kibosh on that: “The idea of a great moral teacher saying what Christ said is out of the question. In my opinion, the only person who can say that sort of thing is either God or a complete lunatic suffering from that form of delusion which undermines the whole mind of man. We may note in passing that He was never regarded as a mere moral teacher. He did not produce that effect on any of the people who actually met Him. He produced mainly three effects—Hatred—Terror—Adoration. There was no trace of people expressing mild approval.”   So, it is Jesus or Mohammed. One is alive “at the right hand of the Father”, the other is still dead.   DANCING AROUND JESUS   What we are seeing playing out among Western intelligentsia is a fearful symmetry; watching a culture in decline, afraid of the consequences of lost faith while hopeful of a cultural Christianity to save it.   The label “cultural Christian” has become a new way to position oneself between theism and a rejection of the value of Western culture and civilization that has its foundation in Christianity.   Intellectual players like entrepreneur Elon Musk, philosopher Richard Dawkins and Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson all flirt with Christianity but are not prepared to make a commitment to Christ.  It’s like having a steak dinner at a restaurant and all you get is the juice; the steak has been eaten by the waiter.   We have become a nation of idolators; we worship everything but the one true God. Millions have dropped out of the church and Gen Zs are not even giving the church a first thought.   To say that we are reaping what we have sown is to state the obvious. Only a genuine revival can change the hearts and minds of people; and that is a work of the Spirit, not our own tortured wills.   END

By David G. Duggan © Special to Virtueonline www.virtueonline.org April 18, 2025   There’s very little in life that I hate more than paying taxes. Unless it is waiting in line at the post office to send in my tax return. Having written enough checks in the last 45 days to feed a family of four for a year, I wasn’t exactly pleased when the line at the local post office snaked out the door. Rather than find out how long it would take to get to the head of that line, I hopped back on my bike to pedal to another branch where I hoped the line was shorter.   A mile and a half away, I was sixth in line. Several patrons ahead of me was a man in a wheel chair. I was too far away to eavesdrop but when I approached the adjacent window I asked what brought him there. “I’m asking about medical supplies which haven’t been delivered.” And I think that I have problems.   “The poor you will always have with you,” replied Jesus when Judas rebuked Him for allowing Mary to anoint His feet with nard, rather than have that Himalayan-derived perfume sold to give the proceeds to the poor (John 12). Judas may have been a hypocrite, stealing from the disciples’ common purse, but even if he had been without sin, his concern for the poor squares with Jesus’. Should we dismiss Judas’ rebuke as mere deflection from his sin?   Some of the money which I just paid to the three governments controlling my life will go for medical supplies and care, to food and shelter, to job training and education. The poor, always with us, will wait in line for these gifts from those with more who have been anointed by God’s abundance.   They also serve who stand and wait, wrote John Milton on his blindness. No medical supplies awaited him. He depended solely on God’s grace shown on the cross, confirmed in the tomb, proved in the Resurrection. David Duggan is a retired attorney living in Chicago. He is an occasional contributor to VOL.

By John Zmirak THE STREAM April 17, 2025   Imagine if in the Gospel narrative of the Gadarene swine, at some point along their thunderous plummet toward the sea, one of the alpha boars halted. He sniffed the air, looked down at the waves, and gave a thoughtful grunt. Then other pigs around him halted too. They seemed to be listening to him. Would he lead them back up the slope, despite the demons urging them onward down to destruction?   Great Britain’s Supreme Court just halted on its haunches and gave a thoughtful grunt. The Daily Telegraph reports:   Transgender women are not legally women, Britain’s highest court has declared in a landmark ruling hailed as a victory by JK Rowling.   Supreme Court judges unanimously ruled that the terms “woman” and “sex” in the 2010 Equality Act referred to biological sex, not acquired gender.   Wednesday’s judgment was hailed as a victory for common sense by gender-critical campaigners and politicians, with JK Rowling saying it would protect “the rights of women and girls across the UK”.   Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, said the ruling meant that the “era of Keir Starmer telling us women can have penises has come to an end”.   It followed a years-long legal battle between campaign group For Women Scotland and the Scottish Government over the definition of a woman.   Lord [Patrick] Hodge told the court: “The unanimous decision of this court is that the definition of the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer to a biological woman and biological sex.”   In its 88-page ruling, the court added that the “concept of sex is binary” under the Equality Act 2010.   It was also in Great Britain that the Cass Report appeared, exposing the false claims that sexually confused teens benefit from puberty blockers and other grotesque, biology-denying interventions. That report largely stopped the chemical and surgical assault on teens’ sexuality in Britain, though it continues in the U.S. — with Colorado lawmakers recently voting to strip custody from parents who won’t “affirm” transgender delusions.   As we reported here, the Vatican just blew a hole in its previously solid opposition to sexual mutilations, allegedly to prevent “trans” people from committing suicide (a discredited claim, but don’t confuse liberal Catholics with the facts). Fake empathy trumps real doctrine, and throws into question the teaching authority of the Catholic Church for any serious believer.   Who can trust a Vatican doctrinal judgment ever again after this? We will simply have to judge every non-infallible Vatican pronouncement (which is 99.99999999999999% of them) purely on its merits. How does that leave us functionally distinguishable from Protestants? Unless, of course, we become good papal Stalinists and accept new teachings that reverse old teachings with the breezy obedience of workers at Orwell’s Ministry of Truth: “Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.” If you outsource your conscience entirely to whatever Aleister Crowley disciple a given pope appoints, then life gets a whole lot simpler.   Will This Win for Sanity Stick?   The UK ruling is a major defeat for the transgender doctrine of demons, which claims that we have up to 47 human “genders” and shift among them at will, like spirits possessing a body. (That is why I prefer to call the political movement that backs this teaching “LGBTQMYNAMEISLEGION.”)   Will this legal ruling, which peels Great Britain away from the juggernaut of support for sexual delusion, force the post-Christian cult of “inclusion” and suicidal empathy to pause and reflect? Will the Muslim voters who increasingly call the shots in Great Britain inform their pale, white puppets that enabling sexual fetishes isn’t sharia-friendly? More likely, such Muslims will continue their customary policy of letting the kuffar (filthy infidels) destroy themselves, confident that they will inherit and Islamicize the country once it passes the point of no return.   Why Reason Alone Can’t Prevail   It’s politically helpful to us in the short term that the Left has tied around its neck the anchor of transgender madness, which defies the obvious biological truths on which every human civilization has been built, which sustain every mammalian species, and extend even into the plant kingdom. If you want to find sexual polymorphism of the kind that the Democratic Party (and now many churches) believe exists in humans, you really have to drill down into the world of the Fungus. Anyone who insists he’s “genderfluid” is basically saying “I’m a mushroom.” It might seem funny to agree with him, but since he’s an image-bearer of God it’s actually sinful. That’s why you can’t use “preferred pronouns,” even if a government (such as Ireland’s) prosecutes you and seizes your bank account. Reason and science alone, in theory, should collapse any legal or intellectual support for the strange sexual fantasies of the transgenderists. But I fear this won’t happen. Ask yourself why it didn’t already happen. No new scientific discoveries launched the transgender revolution. Nobody looked in a microscope and found 45 extra, undiscovered genders. None of that stopped the psychiatric and medical professions from throwing their weight behind trans ideology as fervidly as they once embraced lobotomies, and cancelling dissenters no matter what their credentials might be.   Reason and evidence cease to matter to people when they threaten to impinge on sexual liberation. (See life beginning at conception, which every biologist knows and every pro-choicer disputes.)   I once wondered here why the people who want eugenic abortions for kids with Down syndrome don’t embrace euthanasia for trans patients, since the same arguments of saving money and avoiding suffering apply much more to the transgender than they do to the unborn:   Why does our society embrace transgender people as victims and heroes, as brave pioneers and fascinating transgressors — while ruthlessly hunting down and wiping out kids with Down syndrome?   It’s not as if people with Down syndrome made the same kind of demands as trans activists do. You don’t see Down syndrome advocates demanding that we abolish IQ tests, dismantle every barrier to Down syndrome acceptance, until people with Down syndrome were piloting airplanes and serving as cabinet members — and labeling those who opposed this as bigots and haters. Keeping a person with Down syndrome healthy is nowhere near as expensive as changing a person’s sex, and fooling his body for decades with artificial hormones.   Down syndrome advocates don’t insist we use special pronouns, reject fundamental truths of biology, or otherwise reengineer our education and society to accommodate them. They’d just like us to stop hunting them down and wiping them out.   And I offered the unsettling answer: While the average citizen might be equally unsettled by either a person with Down syndrome or one with gender dysphoria, there’s one critical difference between them. The former is simply a person who has been born with some physical and intellectual challenges. There’s nothing sexy or kinky about him, he’s simply somewhat disabled. … The transgender person, however, is a sexual transgressor. He’s doing outrageous and kinky things that violate the Natural Law (whatever his culpability). If we condemn or reject his sins, what would that mean for us? For our own sins, the ugly stuff in our past or our Internet history?   Our fallen will, and our attachment to sexual sin, blocks many of us from taking the verdict of reason seriously. We can manage that since we’ve accepted the Darwinian paradigm which claims that all life, including human, is a piece of cosmic happenstance with no trace of a Designer. We’ve trained ourselves to see the existence of the sexes not as some artifact of a loving Maker who has in mind a plan for how we ought to live. Instead, the sexes are just a clumsy, messy means of reproducing the species which happened to confer a greater fitness on some long-ago lower animal, so he survived. We’re no more bound to respect our sexual nature than we’re morally obliged to live as hunter-gatherers, merely because our ancestors did.   We can seek “progress,” “freedom,” and our “authentic” sexual identities — acquired via porn addiction, social contagion, or the groomers who work at the government school. And anyone who criticizes the new, fungal definition of human beings is a “hater” who opposes “diversity” and “inclusion.” So we use the force of the State to punish him, like some medieval heretic. Because what we’re following isn’t reason or science, but a dark new religion which demands blood sacrifice — preferably of children. John Zmirak is a senior editor at The Stream and author or coauthor of 14 books, including The Politically Incorrect Guide to Immigration and The Politically Incorrect Guide to Catholicism. His newest book is No Second Amendment, No First.

By John Mac Ghlionn RELIGION UNPLUGGED April 14, 2025 (ANALYSIS) Churches burned to the ground. Pastors executed in public squares. Families forced to renounce their faith or face the sword. Across the world, Christianity is under attack . In Nicaragua, priests are arrested for speaking against the regime. Crosses are torn down, while Catholic-run charities are shut overnight. In China, underground churches are raided. Bibles are confiscated. Worshippers disappear into the prison system, never to be seen again. In India, Hindu nationalist mobs storm Christian villages, torching homes, beating pastors, forcing mass conversions at gunpoint. Then there’s Nigeria — the deadliest place in the world to be a Christian. In the past 20 years, at least 50,000 have been slaughtered. Not in a war. Not by an invading army. But by Islamist extremists and Fulani herdsmen, acting with near-total impunity.  Despite the persecution, despite the bloodshed, despite the silence of world leaders — Christianity is not dying. In fact, in some of the most hostile places on earth, it's thriving. One of those places may surprise many: Iran. The Land of Poets and Kings’ transformation into an Islamic theocracy was not inevitable. Before 1979, Iran was a rapidly modernizing nation under the rule of the Shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. While his regime had its share of repression, particularly against political dissidents, it also championed Westernization, economic growth and women's rights. The streets of Tehran bore little resemblance to what they do today — women were not compelled to cover themselves, cultural life flourished with cinemas, nightclubs and a vibrant art scene. The Iranian Revolution, however, brought the sharpest of shifts. Led by Ayatollah Khomeini, the uprising against the shah was fueled by a mix of economic dissatisfaction, opposition to his authoritarian rule and a rising wave of religious fundamentalism. What followed was not just a change in leadership but a complete reordering of society. Sharia law became the foundation of the state, and the Islamic Republic swiftly moved to suppress secularism, silence dissent and impose rigid moral codes. Of course, Iran’s rigid brand of Islam is not reflective of the broader Muslim world. Rather, it emerged from a revolution that exploited both political discontent and religious zealotry, transforming one of the Middle East’s most modern societies into one of its most repressive Essentially, in the blink of an eye, Iran transformed from a playground into a prison. Apostasy — leaving Islam — became a crime punishable by death. Churches were outlawed, converts were hunted, and Farsi Bibles became contraband. Any challenge to the regime’s authority was swiftly and brutally crushed. Yet today, despite every effort, Christianity is exploding. Rather incredibly, Iran now has one of the fastest-growing Christian populations in the world. Not in grand cathedrals. Not in public squares. But underground, spreading quietly and carefully. Most Christian churches are outlawed. There are official church buildings for the traditional Armenian and Assyrian Christian minorities, and their clergy are allowed to wear robes. For the most part, however, it’s just ordinary Iranians — students, workers even former mullahs — who have seen the darkness of the Islamic Republic and want something else. Many have turned to Christianity after having visions and dreams of Christ. It happens so often that the regime has publicly warned against it, spooked by a phenomenon it cannot fully control. Others convert because they have tasted the cruelty of their rulers. They have lived under forty years of Islamic law. They have seen its corruption, its hypocrisy, its bloodshed. They are fed up. They want freedom. And the more the government cracks down, the more the underground church grows. This occurs amid increasing unrest throughout the country. The youth —many disillusioned, desperate and defiant — are rejecting not just the Islamic Republic, but Islam itself. Decades of oppression have created a backlash. The 2022 protests following the murder of Mahsa Amini were not just about hijabs; they were about an entire generation suffocating under a regime that has stolen their future. For years, young Iranians have watched their country decay under the weight of inept leadership and rigid religious rule. Opportunities are scarce, dissent is met with violence and even the smallest acts of personal freedom — listening to Western music, holding hands in public, questioning religious authority — are policed with excessive force. The ambitions of their parents' generation, who once hoped for a prosperous, modern Iran, have been reduced to survival under an unforgiving theocracy. Many young people see no future for themselves in the country they call home. Some turn to escape — risking their lives to flee the country. Others resist in the streets. But a growing number are turning to a faith that cannot be controlled by clerics or crushed by secret police. Although the Ayatollahs have responded with bullets, prison cells, and executions, sheer force can only do so much against an idea whose time has come. The regime is losing its grip. The Islamic Republic has long ruled through force and fear. Yet, as disillusionment spreads, hope — ironically enough — takes root. In this context, Christianity is not just a religion. It is an act of defiance. John Mac Ghlionn is a researcher and essayist. He covers psychology and social relations. His writing has appeared in places such as UnHerd, The US Sun and The Spectator World.

By  Ari Mordechai THE STREAM April 14, 2025 A high-profile Catholic podcast co-hosted by celebrity Catholic convert Dr. Gavin Ashenden is stirring controversy after Ashenden’s colleague, Katherine Bennett, platformed a disgraced holocaust denier Catholic priest. Fr. James Mawdsley, who has called the Holocaust “ the biggest lie in history ,” claimed that the genocide of the Jews “didn’t happen” on the  Catholic Unscripted  podcast, posted on  YouTube , days before the Jewish Passover and Christian Holy Week. “I think that the Jews have basically infiltrated the church, destroyed her liturgy, her dogma, her morals, and unless we call that out and overcome that and be honest about the governance in our Catholic faith then things are only going to get worse,” Mawdsley claimed. Bennett, a Catholic journalist and former stand-up comedian, who was appointed mentor for evangelization in the archdiocese of Southwark by Archbishop John Wilson, did not challenge Mawdsley but responded by revealing that she too was now a member of a Latin Mass parish. “The Jews and the devil are laughing at us,” stressed Mawdsley. The traditionalist priest who featured on the white nationalist show  The Backlash  claimed that Catholics who have a “backward idea of obedience” have “been manipulated” to shout “crucify him” in the post-Vatican II passion liturgy on Palm Sunday and Good Friday. “It was a Jewish organization  Amici Israel  instigated by a Jewish woman and two poor priests who lost their way” who urged the Vatican to insert a genuflection during the Good Friday prayer for the Jews, Mawdsley told Bennett. The “Satanist” Jews, who went to Pope Pius XII in 1949, told the pope that inserting the genuflection during the said prayer was “more important than removing [the word] ‘perfidious’ in the prayer for the Jews,” the priest claimed, without citing any sources. While Pope Pius XII rejected their requests, the Jewish historian, Jules Isaac, who met Pope Pius XII and Pope John XXIII, was largely responsible for influencing the Vatican to alter the prayers, Mawdsley, who was suspended by the  Priestly Fraternity of Saint Peter , insisted. The priest, who is known to spout similar conspiracy theories regarding the Jewish subversion of Catholic liturgy, further claimed that Jewish organizations like B’nai B’rith, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Jewish Committee (AJC), and the World Jewish Congress run by Nahum Goldmann were also “working in the background.” According to Mawdsley, Goldmann had a “Talmudic element” whose goal was to “destroy everything” of the old order of society, including a social hierarchy, so “no tradition will be considered sacred anymore.” The Jews “were blaming the Church straight after World War I for Auschwitz,” Mawdsley falsely asserted, even though Auschwitz a concentration camps and extermination center run by the Nazis in occupied Poland only during World War II. “I won’t say too much on your channel on YouTube but that’s the biggest lie in history,” he continued. “And to make the church feel a responsibility that wasn’t hers: that the genocide of Jews occurred because of the gospels and because of the church fathers, this is the most phenomenal blasphemy.” “But the World War II lies are the biggest and the first lie of the devil against God,” the priest, who is notorious for his revisionist version of history, maintained, blaming “the Jews” for “going in to tell in ( sic ) the Vatican after filling the press with these stories that the church is responsible for the genocide of Jews which didn’t happen.” “And neither is the Church responsible. She’s done the opposite. She’s protected them for 2,000 years,” Mawdsley claimed, despite the Vatican. “And yet they accuse her of seeking their death. And the Church bows to this lie with her liturgy.” “The Holocaust is a lie. It didn’t happen,” Mawdsley earlier claimed on  The Backlash . “Many Jews suffered as they were being expelled from Europe by the Nazis, but there was no genocidal plan from Hitler or the Germans to annihilate the Jews. That’s all a lie. And that’s what they wielded then as a weapon against the Church.” In a podcast on the while nationalist Substack “White Rabbit,” Mawdsley has also  claimed  that “Adolf Hitler did not start World War II. It was the Jews.”   Stating that his goal is to “expose the demonic falsity of the Holocaust narrative,” Mawdsley  elaborates : Hitler did not set out to conquer Europe, while the Jews schemed then and now to rule the world. And crucially, the responsibility for the Jews who died in World War II, and that number is much closer to 1 million than to six million, is shared in very different ways by the Axis powers, the Allies and the Jews. I will offer evidence for all this not because I wish to promote National Socialism, but because I do wish to expose the Jewish lies which cause innumerable wars; lies still operative today to destroy nations and souls. Meanwhile, a day after Bennett’s interview with Mawdsley, Ashenden  posted  his own video on  Catholic Unscripted  explaining his perspective on antisemitism. While not condemning or rebuting the podcast with Mawdsley, Ashenden admitted that “antisemitism” was “toxic,” but he, Bennett and Mark Lambert, the third member of the Catholic Unscripted team, “have different views on a lot of things.” “And one of the great things about the way in which we work together is that we allow each other to express opinions. Some of which we passionately agree with and others which we don’t agree with,” he noted. “Sometimes you have to say that’s a line I can’t cross. And for me antisemitism has thrown up the issue of those lines,” he added. “And how we manage the Jewish question seems to have become a litmus test for whether or not people can get on whether they can talk together. Well I’m absolutely convinced that one of the things we need to do is to give each other space for exploring different views,” he said. “As my father once taught me it is not enough for people especially public figures to be neutral or not be antisemitic, one must be anti-antisemitic,” he said. In his discussion, Ashenden offered six different definitions of “who is a Jew,” giving “credit to Father Mawdsley.” The former chaplain to Queen Elizabeth II, said he “like[d] very much his [Mawdsley’s] work on the older and the younger son” [cf. parable of the Prodigal Son].” Ashenden, who converted to Catholicism, acknowledged he found Holocaust denial “utterly and completely distasteful,” but said he had changed his mind on some aspects of the Shoah. Ashenden explained: Now forced to look at it more carefully, I’ve discovered that some of the facts may be contested particularly the numbers of Jews killed in the death camps. I have to say I don’t really care about the numbers. They’re placed at six million. There is a school of thought that says the numbers have been inflated and they’ve been inflated by Jewish people in order to gain a greater sympathy. I don’t know if that’s true literally but I don’t buy it as a comment. The high-profile convert to Catholicism curiously stated that numbers did not matter in the case of the genocide of the Jews: You see I don’t think it matters whether six million Jews were gassed, killed, tortured, starved to death, or five! I don’t care if it wasn’t five and it was four. I don’t care if it wasn’t four and it was three. You can reduce that number right the way down. It makes no difference to me whatsoever in terms of the responsibility the Western civilization and particularly the Nazi party in Germany take for what happened. Thousands have watched both videos and the majority of comments from traditionalist Catholics have been in praise of Mawdsley. While a handful of comments have praised Ashenden, most commenters attacked him for capitulating to the Jews. It is not clear if Ashenden will seek to preserve his reputation by quitting the Catholic Unscripted team or will continue to associate with Bennett, who throughout the interview was affirming of Mawdsley’s views and never challenged him once. Lambert has not issued any disclaimer or dissociated himself from the podcast. While Mawdsley has written seven books in which he repeatedly discusses “the Jews,” all his books are all self-published by his own company  New Old . The company does not seem to have published books by any other author. Mawdsley was married to Elizabeth in January 2005. On their honeymoon in  Rome , the couple received a blessing from  Pope John Paul II . The marriage later broke down and Mawdsley subsequently obtained a declaration of nullity. In a landmark gesture in March 2000, Pope John Paul II visited  Yad Vashem , the national Holocaust museum in Israel, and apologized for centuries of Catholic antisemitism. “I assure the Jewish people the Catholic Church … is deeply saddened by the hatred, acts of persecution and displays of anti-Semitism directed against the Jews by Christians at any time and in any place,” he said, adding that there were “no words strong enough to deplore the terrible tragedy of the Holocaust.” Ari Mordechai is a human rights and antisemitic campaigner who lives in Tel Aviv. He is married to Ofek. Two of the couple’s five children have served in the Israeli Defense Forces

PRESS RELEASE 15 April 2025 A UK Christian charity is urging all charity trustees to urgently risk assess their ‘cyber vulnerability’ after an unsubstantiated attack on their ministry caused  Go Daddy , their cyber host, to unilaterally ‘terminate’ their website leading to loss of income and restrictions on ministry. Anglican Mainstream (AM), a leading Anglican online news service, was informed on February 28 that G o Daddy  had received one general complaint about ‘potential breach of copyright’ after it had uploaded links to news articles for educational purposes. Such action is allowed under UK media law. For the past 22 years, AM has posted daily news and weekly summaries of church and society news on its  www.anglicanmainstream.org  website. In over two decades, never has AM received a complaint related to copyright. Go Daddy , which has consistently refused to detail under what specific law their action was justified, had received one email from a person claiming to represent NLA Media Access.  NLA sells copyright licenses to charities and education providers, when needed. NLA did not claim to represent any news agency whose article they listed, or confirm it was acting on specific client instructions. Neither had it previously successfully contacted AM direct with any copyright concerns – or to sell them one of their licenses. NLA subsequently claimed to have sent a previous email. However, by way of summary trial and execution – and without hearing AM’s side,  Go Daddy , said, via email: “ We appreciate your business, but due to the nature and scope of the infringement that we’ve identified, we have no choice but to terminate your use of our hosting services for this website. This suspension is permanent and there are no reactivation options available.” Go Daddy  also informed AM that hundreds of posts that they had hosted over the years had been destroyed – thereby denying AM’s lawyers any opportunity to counterclaim any copyright breach or, to present a legal defence.  In short, all evidence has been destroyed. The charity’s website is a major source of income.  Termination of the website would have a significant impact on its annual £16,000 income, plus the restriction of its educational ministry – regularly viewed by over 800 people daily, worldwide.  AM trustees sought legal advice from leading religious discrimination Barrister Paul Diamond, and due to the loss of income and trade restrictions, immediately sought a replacement website host.  This has now been secured and relaunched – but at additional cost to the charity. AM trustees believe the copyright claims – of which there is now no evidence, could be a smokescreen for political action. Since the beginning of March, the charity has repeatedly sought clarification from NLA Media Access as to whom it formally represents and, whether they were acting on instructions from a real UK news source or, from a Third-Party member of the public, or group, wishing to restrict the charity’s traditional views on marriage/sexuality.  Such was the overall genre of the posts in question. No explanation or defence has been forthcoming.  AM are concerned that they are being discriminated against because of their religious beliefs. Canon Dr Chris Sugden, Chairman of AM said:  “AM clearly attracted the attention of progressives and revisionists concerned with sexuality issues. This was a deliberate and planned takedown and we have no appeal or recourse to Go Daddy.  Over two decades, we have posted sections from thousands of news articles, each time with a full link to the source, often with a scientific, sociological, and/or theological critique – as is allowed under UK media law. We’ve never had any complaint from any news agency before.  Though, given all the articles relate to a traditional view of marriage and, the impact of current cultural expressions of sexuality on society, it seems clear to us that this is a politically and religiously motivated attack on a small charity, using the heavy hand of media law threat. Over the past 22 years, I, and many of the AM trustees have regularly been interviewed by journalists from the news agencies which NLA Media list. We have good and professional relations with each of them. “But NLA media know we are a small charity, and that taking a major company to the High Court is not something we can do with our income. Plus, Go Daddy clearly had no interest whatsoever in investigating the allegations. They simply chose to believe what was said and terminated us. In a single click they deleted decades of archived articles which hundreds of researchers, church leaders and mission bosses globally use to resource their ministries and studies. “This is a modern-day case of ‘David and Goliath’ – but we are determined to take this to the Small Claims Court for damages.  More importantly than money, we will ask the Court to order ‘full disclosure’ from Go Daddy, and NLA Media, including all email correspondence, as to who was the original instigator of this action. We believe full disclosure of the facts will reveal this was a calculated, political attack against Anglican Mainstream. We have full confidence that under UK law, we will see justice triumph. We know who won in the David verses Goliath battle!” AM says this is not the first cyber-related attack on a UK Christian charity in the last year.  They are aware that at least two other major Christian organisations have been hit with a serious, targeted virus attack on their main data systems, each requiring expert technical and legal intervention to restore online ministry.  Canon Sugden added: “ We are urging all trustees of Christian charities to ‘risk assess’ rigorously their readiness for any cyber-attack, and to have detailed plans in place to remedy the position as soon as possible. For us, the loss of income, and the time delay in securing an alternative web host, and professional fees cost the charity around £9,500. We hope that our treatment, at the hands of a ‘cyber-Goliath,’ will be a warning to other small charities.” • To access the newly hosted AM website, visit  www.anglicanmainstream.org END For further information/interview: Canon Dr Chris Sugden  07808 297043        sugdenmainstream@gmail.com Chairman, Anglican Mainstream Revd Paul Eddy  07923 653781            paul@pauleddy.uk PR Consultant to Anglican Mainstream Editor’s Notes: http://www.anglicanmainstream.org  : The Anglican Mainstream website serves as an information resource for orthodox Anglicans and other Christians, by posting excerpts of articles and other material, from a variety of sources, on Christianity, church, and culture daily, and original reports and comment from the Editor and other writers. Anglican Mainstream is a registered charity, number 1111739. http://www.nlamediaaccess.com   : NLA media access, previously the Newspaper Licensing Agency was established by the UK national newspapers in 1996 to manage newspaper copyright collection. The NLA works on behalf of the UK’s newspapers and licenses organisations to make paper and digital copies of newspaper content. The NLA currently licenses over 150,000 businesses and organisations ranging from large government bodies, plcs, and limited companies to partnerships and public relations agencies.

Can Europe survive much longer?   By Bill Muehlenberg CULTURE WATCH April 14, 2025 That Islam is slowly but surely on the march throughout the West, with little or nothing stopping it, is clearly evident. In Europe especially we see the shocking transformation of Western cities and communities into Muslim enclaves. There are now even numerous no-go zones in Europe where the police and fire departments are hesitant to enter. The fact that many Muslims might want to live in peace and enjoy what the West has to offer is really beside the point. True Muslims committed to their faith want to see the entire world become an Islamic caliphate with everyone submitting to sharia law. A number of quick points that help to make the case about the Islamisation of the West – and especially Europe – can be highlighted here. First, consider these alarming facts about the rapid and relentless growth of Islam in Europe, as measured by the number of mosques that are found there today: -In Germany there are around 2800 mosques today.-In France there are some 2600 mosques (there were just 8 in 1975).-In the UK there are over 1500 mosques.-London has the greatest number of mosques outside of Turkey. And many mosques in Europe today were formerly Christian churches! This is the real act of colonisation taking place. Forget about so-called Western imperialism. The traffic is all one way. Muslims are well on the way to taking over many Western cities and towns, if not entire nations. And this is being achieved by various means. It can be by much higher birthrates. While Muslims still have large families (and often multiple wives), Westerners are on a massive demographic decline, being far more willing to abort their babies than allow them to live. Thus we keep hearing that the most popular name today for baby boys in the UK and elsewhere is Muhammad. Add to this the almost unchecked immigration policies of most Western countries, where open borders allow millions of Muslims to pour into the host countries. Very few Western nations are even properly vetting these masses of migrants, and they often tend to get special consideration over other people. While some of them seek to fit in, so many do not. They simply do not share Western values and beliefs, wanting instead to import their medieval way of life into their newfound homelands. And many often refuse to even learn the host country’s language. All this is a recipe for disaster. No nation can allow its social and cultural fabric to be shredded like this and long survive. As mentioned, political Islam is an expansionist ideology, and Muslims are working overtime to take over the West by any means possible. Mass murder, killing sprees, and vehicular terrorism by jihadists is simply one part of this. And in places like the UK, Christians are being arrested for sharing the gospel in public, or praying silently outside of abortion mills, while mass Muslim religious meeting are allowed to be held in public with no questions asked by authorities. And the horrific Muslim rape gangs that were allowed to thrive and flourish in places like the north of England has also been a massive failure on the part of authorities. There still is no real closure on what took place there, with thousands of girls raped, imprisoned and even killed. But fear of being seen as ‘racist’ has kept the authorities from properly doing their job. See more on this here:  https://billmuehlenberg.com/2025/02/01/grooming-gangs-multiculturalism-and-barbarous-britain/ Consider also the rapid change in the religious makeup of Western nations. A friend just posted this on the social media: “ENGLAND: Catholics are on track to outnumber Anglicans for the first time since Henry VIII”. I replied with these words: “The real issue is whether Muslims will soon enough outnumber both Catholics and Protestants there!” That is now a very worrying reality that we face. Here is another vignette worth mentioning. One meme making the rounds says this: Islamic preacher Zakir Naik entered a taxi in London and said loudly to the taxi driver: -Brother, please turn off the radio, because according to the instructions of the Holy Quran, I am forbidden to listen to music, because during the time of Prophet Muhammad there was no music, especially Western music, which is the music of the infidels (kafirs). The taxi driver politely turned off the radio, stopped the taxi and opened the door. Zakir asked him, -Brother, what are you doing…? The taxi driver politely replied: -In the time of the Prophet: There were no taxis; There were no bombs; There was no theft; There were no speakers in the mosque to wake up the children, the elderly or the sick; There were no suicide attacks; There were no AK-47s; So shut up, go outside and wait for your camel… Whether that exchange actually occurred or not is in some ways immaterial. It certainly represents exactly what is happening all over so much of England, Europe and the West. Hate preachers in mosques do not even hide their intentions to see the West fully Islamised. And we are simply sleeping through it all. Another meme features nine actual front-page headlines from British newspapers from recent years. They are: -‘Muslim convert’ beheads woman in garden -Christmas is banned; it offends Muslims -Muslims tell British: Go to hell! -Sniffer dogs offend Muslims -Millions are eating halal food without knowing it -Muslim-only public loos -Jihadi John family’s 20 years on benefits -Muslim thugs burn poppies -Now Muslims get their own laws in Britain And please watch this short video of a British cop telling an elderly man that saying “speak English” is a hate crime! I kid you not!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dYtls8E4naU And consider this: American Vice President J. D. Vance, who has been very good in warning Europe about how freedom and democracy are quickly being decimated there, was speaking about nuclear proliferation a few months ago. Half-jokingly he said this about the possibility of the first truly Islamist country to get nuclear weapons. He said ‘maybe it’s Iran, maybe Pakistan, but maybe it’s actually the UK, since Labour just took over’. He may not be wrong there! Another meme making the rounds on the social media is as telling as it is sobering. It features a museum-like building with a Muslim woman and her children (all fully covered in black Islamic garb) looking at an exhibit piece – a blonde-haired, white couple. The caption to it reads as follows: Mom, what is this? -These are people from Europe. Who are the people from Europe? -They are those who lived in Europe before it became ours. Did you fight them to get it? -No, they just gave us their land because they were afraid of being called racists! Astute observers of the scene in Europe have been warning about all this for quite some time now. Just two books of many can be mentioned, and both are now two decades old! -Eurabia:   The Euro-Arab Axis  by Bat Ye’or (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005) -Londonistan  by Melanie Phillips (Encounter Books, 2006) Let me offer a few quotes from each. In the very important book  Eurabia  Ye’or says this in her Preface: “The book describes Europe’s evolution from a Judeo-Christian civilization, with important post-Enlightenment secular elements, into a post-Judeo-Christian civilization that is subservient to the ideology of  jihad  and the Islamic powers that propagate it. The new European civilization in the making can be called a ‘civilization of dhimmitude’.” And in her conclusion she writes: Islamism has entrenched itself in Europe’s strategic nerve centers, engineering the irreversible process of Europe’s dhimmitude: its respectful obedience to  shari’a  rules relating to social and political behavior, teaching, and gender. This signifies the definitive affiliation of an aging, confused, and timorous Europe with an assertive, demographically booming, Arab-Muslim world. The EU policy of impotence was planned, proclaimed, and implemented over the years by Europe’s democratically elected leaders and its spiritual guides. And early on in her volume, Phillips says this: “For more than a decade, London had been the epicentre of Islamic militancy in Europe. Under the noses of successive British governments, Britain’s capital had turned into ‘Londonistan’ – a mocking play on the names of such state sponsors of terrorism as Afghanistan – and became the major European centre for the promotion, recruitment and financing of Islamic terror and extremism.” The book’s final paragraphs deserve our close attention: Britain is the global leader of English-speaking culture. It was Britain that first developed the Western ideas of the rule of law, democracy and liberal ideals, and exported them to other countries. Now Britain is leading the rout of those values, allowing its culture to become vulnerable to the predations of militant Islam. If British society goes down under this twin assault, the impact will be incalculable – not just for the military defense of the West against radical Islamism, but for the very continuation of Western civilization itself.   The West is under threat from an enemy that has shrewdly observed the decadence and disarray in Europe, where Western civilization first began. And the greatest of all is in Britain, the very cradle of Western liberty and democracy, but whose cultural confusion is now plain for all to see in Londonistan. The Islamists chose well. Britain is not what it once was. Whether it will finally pull itself together and stop sleepwalking into cultural oblivion is a question on which the future of the West may now depend. Note, I did a review of  Londonistan  when it first appeared:  https://billmuehlenberg.com/2006/08/31/a-review-of-londonistan-how-britain-is-creating-a-terror-state-within-by-melanie-philips/ If they were writing such things a full twenty years ago, imagine just how much worse things are today. Indeed, their words largely went unheeded, and we are now paying a steep price for this. But thankfully others have been warning the West about where we are heading. The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam by Murray, Douglas (Author)  Another person regularly sounding the alarm on all this is Douglas Murray. In his 2017 volume  The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam  he said this: “Europe is committing suicide. Or at least its leaders have decided to commit suicide. Whether the European people choose to go along with this is, naturally, another matter. . . . As a result, by the end of the lifespans of most people currently alive, Europe will not be Europe and the peoples of Europe will have lost the only place in the world we had to call home.” (In a few days I hope to post my review of his brand-new book,  On Democracies and Death Cults  on my site, so stay tuned.) Europe is in a real bad way. Christianity has been in a massive decline there over the past few centuries while Islam is on a massive growth spurt. Christianity is what made Europe and the West great. Unless something changes, and quite soon, political Islam will be their final death knell. END

April 12, 2025 A powerful  article by leading demographer Lyman Stone  highlights that marriage is “by far the most important factor shaping fertility”. I caught up with Lyman, whose research points out that 75% of the fertility decline since 2007 is directly tied to falling marriage rates. Watch our  full interview  online here or a  shorter 14 minute version here . In our full conversation, Lyman stresses the urgency of understanding that marriage isn’t just about tradition – it’s the cornerstone of thriving societies. He makes it crystal clear: “Married people still have way more kids”, and marriage itself directly increases fertility. He emphasises that “the more years you spend in marriage, the more babies you have”, demonstrating why earlier marriages are crucial. Our current replacement rate of 1.44 means the population shrinks by a third every generation, a drastic decline with profound implications. Immigration often comes up as a potential solution, but this is not a sustainable long-term fix. Lyman emphasises that real marriage remains the only viable and proven solution for societies to thrive long-term. Yes, Marriage Still Matters For Fertility: New Evidence   By Lyman Stone With fertility  falling around the world , many commentators and governments are scrambling to figure out why and  what can be done . A  recent  Financial Times  article , which heavily  cited previous work at IFS  and replicated some of our analyses, correctly pointed the finger at the main culprit the decline in fertility: falling marriage rates. Declining marriage is the proximate cause of falling fertility in many societies today. Highlights 1.      Not only do these findings tell us that marriage still matters for having babies, but marriage is the most important factor shaping fertility. Post This 2.      Both marital and nonmarital first birth rates have declined, though—on the whole—marital first birth rates remain very similar to where they were at any point between the 1970s and today. Post This 3.      A whopping 75% of the total fertility decline since 2007 is attributable to the shifting likelihood that people are married. Post This This surprises many people, because, in the public’s imagination, nonmarital childbearing is running rampant, while marriage is becoming a thing of the past. In short, these impressions are wrong. In the U.S., the share of births born to unmarried parents is  gradually drifting downwards these days . But more to the point, far from being a thing of the past, marriage remains overwhelmingly predictive of fertility behavior. Married people make more babies, and this is true all around the world,  as we showed in a 2022 report . This January, new evidence for the importance of marriage for understanding fertility became available. Since the 1950s, the U.S. government has run a series of family surveys which operate today as the National Survey of Family Growth (NSFG). The last wave available was a survey covering 2017-19. But the 2022-23 survey wave has now been released. These surveys include retrospective marriage and fertility data that allow us to ask a simple question: What are the odds a childless person had a first birth  before  a first marriage vs.  after  a first marriage? Put simply, how much does getting married increase the odds that women start having children?  It’s important to focus on first births, since the lion’s share of fertility decline in the last 20 years has been due to rising childlessness and, thus, declining rates of first births. The figure below updates a figure we produced for the IFS report mentioned above to include the 2022-2023 NSFG survey respondents. Marital first-birth rates dropped sharply between the 1930s and 1970s, even as nonmarital fertility rates dropped between the 1930s and 1950s, then rose between the 1950s and 1980s. As of the 1980s, it did look like maybe marriage was no longer important for family formation: unmarried women’s first birth rates were near historic highs, and married women’s at historic lows. But in the 1990s, childless unmarried women started becoming less likely to have a first birth, especially due to falling teen birth rates. Meanwhile, marital first birth rates rose. In the ensuring decades, both marital and nonmarital first birth rates have declined, though, on the whole, marital first birth rates remain very similar to where they were at any point between the 1970s and today. The key thing to note, however, is the gap. In the 2020s, the (modestly-sized) NSFG sample suggests unmarried women were  extremely  unlikely to have a first birth, whereas for married women without children, there was about a 15% probability of having children in the next year (with, of course, appreciable variation by age). In other words, marriage still predicts vastly higher fertility. Even today, though people sometimes report in surveys that marriage isn’t all that important for childbearing, the fact is people overwhelmingly prefer to be married before having children, and thus most delay pregnancy until they have a spouse. When it comes to having babies, marriage still matters.  And in fact, declining marriage is by far the most important explanation for falling fertility writ large. The figure below uses data from the American Community Survey’s 2001-2023 fertility and marital status microdata, and shows three different fertility trajectories. The first is just the total fertility rate as measured by the ACS (not an exact fit for actual TFRs from vital statistics, but highly correlated). The second line shows what the total fertility rate  would have been  if marital fertility rates had stayed flat at their 2007 levels all the way to 2023. The third line shows what the total fertility rate  would have been  if  age-specific married population shares  had stayed flat at their 2007 levels until 2023. Based on ACS data, if marital fertility rates had stayed stable after 2007, fertility today would actually be  even lower : the combination of shifting age-specific fertility rates by marital status and the changing actual prevalence of marriage pushed marital births  upwards , especially after 2015. On the other hand, if the share of people married by age had remained stable at 2007 levels, and birth rates  within  marriage had followed their actual historic trajectory, fertility rates today would be about 12% higher. In the ACS data, this means fertility would be at replacement level. A whopping 75% of the total fertility decline since 2007 is attributable to the shifting likelihood that people are married. These findings tell us that, not only does marriage matter for having babies, but marriage is by far the most  important  factor shaping fertility. Nothing else is going to account for 75% of the observed change. And furthermore, married couples are not turning away from having children! As the orange line above shows, changes in the odds that married people choose to have kids just can’t explain almost  any  of the decline in fertility. When Americans today get married, they have babies just like married people at their ages did in the past. Explanations for falling fertility that place the blame on  couples choosing not to have kids  probably can’t explain much about declining fertility, since changes in within-couple behavior are not the main story!  That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t do more to  help  couples choose to have kids! Getting people to marry younger may prove difficult, expectations of having kids may shape marital behavior, and married people still overwhelmingly tend to undershoot their fertility goals. Even if declining marriage rates are the main  cause,  helping couples have more of the children they desire may be part of the  solution . But it’s only part of it: the United States also needs a serious pro-marriage agenda that will dramatically improve the economic and social supports and opportunities for young people to pair off and start families. Lyman Stone is Senior Fellow and Director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies.

By  Gavin Ashenden   THE STREAM April 11, 2025   We were warned that the Left was conducting a long march through the institutions in order to establish dystopian Marxist outcomes, but it was a surprise to see how quickly the success has come in the last 20 years. Equality of outcome and anti-Christian persecution have walked hand-in-hand. Suddenly, in the United Kingdom, freedom of speech has been sucked out of the public space by a Leftist government which is only too happy to express its totalitarian ambitions. The oppression against Christians that has taken place in the last few months alone is breathtaking. Let’s begin with a Christian nurse named Jennifer Melle. She has just been suspended from the National Health Service and effectively lost her job. Why? Because a patient who had been sent to her ward from a prison wanted to leave the hospital. But before that could happen, he needed to have a catheter removed from his penis. However, Patient X – who was in prison for being a pedophile — presented and identified himself as a female. Speaking to the doctor on the phone outside Patient X’s room, discussing the biological dynamics of removing the catheter, Melle referred to Patient X as “mister” and “he.” “This was a real-life medical scenario that required accurate terminology to avoid any doubt between medical professionals,” she later explained. Yet Patient X objected. “Imagine if I called you a n++*****” he told Melle, who is black. “How about I call you a n*****? “Yes, black n****.” He then lunged at her, despite being restrained, and promised he would make an official complaint for being “misgendered.” As a result, Melle was suspended from her job, and then fired from the National Health Service. Dr. Livia Tossici-Bolt has worked as a research scientist. Now retired, she is 64. Some time ago, she was standing in a buffer zone near an abortion clinic, silently holding a hand-made sign which simply said: “Here to talk. If you want to.” As in the U.S., the British state is on hyperalert for any kind of perceived “harassment” of people approaching abortion facilities. This one is surrounded by a buffer zone in which actions such as protesting, displaying distressing images, or engaging in other forms of demonstration that might influence or intimidate patients and staff are illegal. Tossici-Bolt’s sign was carefully crafted to simply facilitate a conversation if the other person took the initiative, but she was still arrested and charged with violating the public space protection order (PSPO). Once in court, the judge said it is a fact that “the sign made no reference to pregnancy, abortion, or religious matters.” One of the police who arrested her “he did not witness her intimidating or harassing any individual.” Nonetheless, the judge still found Tossici-Bolt guilty of violating a PSPO and ordered her to pay a £20,000 fine. This astonishing sum of money represents the price the state is prepared to extort from any citizen who challenges the complete ban on speech it doesn’t like. Equally damaging to personal liberty and free speech is the way the state has persecuted a Christian woman named Isabel Vaughan-Spruce. She was arrested several times for standing and discreetly praying in abortion clinic buffer zones. She sued the government for false imprisonment — and won. Nonetheless the police continue to harass her. She was rearrested only a few weeks ago – this time with police saying that because she is now a publicly recognizable person with notorious views on abortion,  her face alone  is a form of harassment to those who feel differently. This means the police have assumed the power to effectively dictate where a Christian with a public profile can walk or even appear — or where they cannot appear, which potentially constitutes a form of house arrest. When Vice President JD Vance made his powerful speech at the Munich Security Conference in March, he warned Europe in general and the UK in particular that the State Department is keeping an eye on the British government, and that there can be no free trade without guarantees of free speech. This warning comes at a time when the left-wing government in Britain has brought the nation to the brink of economic collapse. British politicians could dismiss Vance’s warning as unpleasant rhetoric — a threat they do not have to act on. But things are about to get a lot worse. The Labour government is drafting legislation that will unjustly and illogically turn any form of disapproval of Islam into a racist hate crime. Given that Islam is neither defined nor confined by race, this prospect is as contradictory as it is repressive. It will effectively create a specific blasphemy law that protects Islam — and only Islam, making any criticism of the religion potentially criminal. The government is also about to implement an “Online Safety Act” which will criminalize on-line “hate speech.” It requires no imagination at all that what the state deems “hate speech” will include the language of Christian ethics and belief. Christians in the United Kingdom are not posturing when they express sincere gratitude to the US government for its concern for them. But more than that, we are convinced that only serious economic pain inflicted on both the country and the government will create sufficient leverage to protect our freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. Once again, in our struggle with tyranny and the threat of the loss of our freedom and Christian culture, we appeal to Americans’ fortitude, generosity and courage to come to our aid in a desperate and dangerous moment in history.  Gavin Ashenden is associate editor of the  Catholic Herald .  Formerly a priest of the  Church of England , and subsequently a  continuing Anglican  bishop, he was appointed  Chaplain to the Queen  from 2008 until his resignation in 2017.

A new Barna survey reveals a significant rise in belief in Jesus among Americans, with 66% now affirming a personal commitment to Him—the highest...   By Michael Foust CROSSWALK April 10, 2025   Belief in Jesus is on the rise in the United States, according to a major new Barna survey that challenges conventional wisdom about the role of Christianity in America. The survey found that 66 percent of U.S. adults say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus that is still important in their life today -- a 12-point increase since 2022 and the highest recorded level in the poll since 2012.   Belief in Jesus has risen each year since 2022, shortly after the pandemic, perhaps indicating that the crisis prompted a renewed search for meaning. Gen Z and Millennials are helping drive the renewed interest, the data shows.   “This shift is not only statistically significant -- it may be the clearest indication of meaningful spiritual renewal in the United States,” a Barna analysis said.   The new data may be the first official confirmation of a trend that other indicators across society have already suggested -- a growing belief in Jesus. The hit Bible-based series The Chosen has amassed more than 200 million viewers worldwide as its cast has drawn mainstream media attention rare for a faith-based project. Another Bible-based series, House of David, hit No. 1 on Prime Video.   Mega-popular podcasters such as Joe Rogan and Jordan Peterson have devoted entire episodes to discussing the Bible. Across cultures, movie and sports personalities are increasingly vocal about their belief in Jesus. Also, the national He Gets Us campaign has brought messages about Jesus to millions. Meanwhile, the Unite US worship movement continues to draw thousands of students on college campuses.   The Barna data would equate to nearly 30 million more Americans professing a belief in Jesus.   “Undeniably, there is renewed interest in Jesus,” David Kinnaman, CEO of Barna, said of the new data. “Many people have predicted the growing irrelevance of Christianity; however, this data shows that spiritual trends have a dynamism and can, indeed, change. This is the clearest trend we’ve seen in more than a decade pointing to spiritual renewal -- and it’s the first time Barna has recorded such spiritual interest being led by younger generations.”   The Barna data found a major increase in belief in Jesus among Gen Z and Millennials, especially among men (67 percent among Gen Z men and 71 percent among Millennial men). Among women, belief rates stand at 61 percent among Gen Z and 64 percent among Millennials.   “Young people -- especially men -- are leading the shift toward Jesus,” the Barna analysis said.   The spiritual renewal among young people is a significant change from previous Barna tracking, which “showed Elders and Boomers as more committed Christians than younger generations,” the analysis said.   Meanwhile, nearly three in 10 U.S. adults say they have a personal commitment to Jesus yet do not identify as Christian -- indicating they are hesitant to embrace organized religion, Barna said.   “At this time, we are seeing interest in Jesus that is growing among those who do not otherwise describe themselves as Christians, indicating that many of the new followers of Jesus are not just ‘recycled’ believers,” Kinnaman said. “Along with younger generations coming to Jesus, this is another strong sign that interest in Jesus is brewing in new population segments of society.”   Kinnaman said the “why” behind the positive data is not easily answered.   “While social research can effectively track trends, it may not always identify the root causes behind them,” he said. “Still, the pandemic undeniably disrupted life for everyone, creating space for existential questions and the pursuit of meaning.”   The new spiritual renewal movement, he said, offers an opportunity for the church.   “As Christian leaders navigate this changing landscape, one thing is clear: Jesus is still attracting people -- even those who have left the pews or never sat in them,” Kinnaman said. “The opportunity is not just to count commitments but to help shape people into lifelong disciples.”   END