Tag: religion

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First Amendment rights

A Finn Reviled, and Worse

Päivi Räsänen cited the Bible’s characterization of homosexuality, about men inflamed by “shameful lusts” (Romans 1:24 – 27). That’s why Finland is prosecuting her.

The effort continues even though the former minister of interior has been acquitted, twice, by lower courts.

Originally, Räsänen’s prosecutors cited three proofs of heresy. A post that she published in 2019, comments made during a radio interview, and her 2004 pamphlet “Male and Female He Created Them: Homosexual relationships challenge the Christian concept of humanity.” The radio “evidence” has been dropped from the case.

You may wonder why Finland’s prosecutors are dredging up religious expression from 2004 in order to pursue its bogus prosecution for a 2019 speech-“crime.” The pamphlet’s publisher, also being prosecuted, probably also wonders. I’m not sure, but my theory is that the prosecutors are jackasses. (The preceding sentence isn’t hate speech, just reasonable-​postulate speech.)

The U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, part of the State Department, has taken up her cause, saying that “no one should face trial for peacefully sharing their beliefs” and that the case against Räsänen “for simply posting a Bible verse is baseless.” Then the Bureau also quotes the Bible, Matthew 5:11: “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account.”

Räsänen has expressed her gratitude and the hope that “justice will prevail not only for me, but for the wider principle of free speech in Finland.”

Americans should be looking in alarm at governmental attacks on freedom across the globe. As well as here at home.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights Fourth Amendment rights privacy too much government

What Does the FBI Do?

FBI, surveillance, censorship, religion, church

“The FBI began surveilling a Catholic priest in 2023,” wrote James Lynch last week, “after the clergyman refused to divulge details about a recently arrested parishioner who was converting to Catholicism and seeking spiritual guidance.”

The agency’s Richmond Field Office “tracked the priest’s movements and coordinated with several other FBI offices and a foreign law enforcement agency to gather intelligence on the clergyman and his priestly organization,” Lynch summarizes.

This is all based on a new House Judiciary Committee report entitled “How the Biden-​Wray FBI Manufactured a False Narrative of Catholic Americans as Violent Extremists.” *

“The FBI attempted to violate the priest-​penitent privilege,” the report continues, “on the faulty reasoning that the Richmond subject under investigation seeking spiritual guidance had not been baptized or completed catechism.”

You may be asking yourself, is the FBI out of its mind?

Certainly, out of this hemisphere. Consider that FBI agents have also extended their reach way beyond U.S. borders to focus on wrongthink elsewhere.

According to investigative journalist David Ágape, “the FBI has helped Brazil censor its citizens,” working with the Soros’ Open Society Foundation to promote censorship in Brazil and a secret judicial police force targeting “people deemed to be spreading false information.”

Was the FBI nurturing censorship in foreign lands to later re-​import them here?

From its beginning, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has had trouble staying within constitutional limits. I guess we should not be shocked that it doesn’t obey jurisdictional limits, either. 

Hopefully, Director Kash Patel will rein in the agency. It won’t be easy.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob. 

* According to the committee, “The report reveals that contrary to testimony from former Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray, the 2023 Richmond memorandum that derisively labeled traditional Catholics as ‘racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists’ was not an isolated incident. Under the new leadership of Director Kash Patel, the FBI has cooperated considerably with the Committee’s subpoena, and has produced over 1,300 pages of additional documents related to the Richmond memorandum that the Biden-​Wray FBI did not disclose.”
Note: You can also mouse-​over the asterisk in the main text to see the footnote.

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crime and punishment First Amendment rights general freedom

Disagreeing With Päivi Räsänen

Finland, pride, gay, censorship, religion, belief, mind control

In 2019, Finnish politician Päivi Räsänen cited the Bible in her Twitter account in order to express her views about sex and Christianity.

“How does the doctrinal foundation of the Church fit in with shame and sin being raised as a matter of pride?” Räsänen asked (in Finnish). Her tweet included a link to an Instagram post displaying Romans 1:24 – 27, which refers to how males “did shameful things with males and thus received in their own persons the due penalty for their perversity.”

Whether you or I agree with Räsänen’s view that homosexuality is per se immoral is irrelevant. What is not irrelevant is our support for freedom of speech and religious expression: she should surely not be prosecuted for expressing her opinion!

But Finnish police investigated her for the tweet. For good measure, they also included as a possible charge her 2004 publication of a pamphlet questioning same-​sex marriage and discussing related issues. She had published the pamphlet before it became illegal in Finland to express such opinions.

Now Räsänen and a Lutheran bishop being prosecuted for similar reasons have been acquitted.

This is a second acquittal. In 2022, the Helsinki District court ruled that it’s not the job of the court “to interpret biblical concepts.” A state prosecutor replied, “You can cite the Bible, but it is Räsänen’s interpretation and opinion about the Bible verses that are criminal.”

Politicians of Finland, don’t continue on this dark path. Revoke all laws that aim to jail people who disagree with you.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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First Amendment rights ideological culture national politics & policies too much government

Biden Brazenness Against Religion

Joe Biden, Christians, Christianity, religion

April is the cruelest month, wrote T.S. Eliot, but he wasn’t referring to the Biden Administration’s ramped-​up war on Christianity.

Mid-​month, the administration barred Catholic priests of the Holy Name College Friary from providing “pastoral care” to servemembers at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. The government contract had been granted, instead, to Mack Global LLC, which the archdiocese characterizes as “a secular defense contracting firm that cannot fulfill the statement of work in the contract.”

Not convinced that this Daily Signal story amounts to “a war on Christianity”?

Well, try The Epoch Times. In “Christians Say Government Targets Them Because They Oppose Left-​Wing Agenda,” Kevin Stocklin lists a number of federal government policies that favor left-​wing politics over the social and political activism of Catholics and other Christians. 

Abortion activists, pro- and anti‑, do occasionally engage in what might plausibly be called “terrorist” activities, but the FBI appears avid in hounding pro-​life protesters, yet uninterested in doing any actual work to curb the string of “violent attacks, including assaults and firebombings, against pro-​life individuals and institutions.”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R‑Ohio)’s “subpoena to the FBI earlier this month demanding information on its alleged program to surveil Catholics for ‘signs of radicalization,’” spurred Stocklin’s reporting about the government’s increasing conflict with Christianity.

Why see traditional Christians as enemies of the State? Because they are.

Potentially, at least.

In part, simply because those who worship God see a worshipful attitude towards the State as something akin to idolatry. And apparently vice versa. But sociologists such as Robert Nisbet regard religion as a countervailing power against ever-​growing government.

If you are looking for a jealous god, the modern total State fills the bill.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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folly media and media people social media

Pray Tell

Tucker Carlson, Fox News, firing, money, religion

At the beginning of the week, Tucker Carlson found himself unemployed.

The Fox News commentator and host of his own show was fired, so abruptly that his people didn’t know it until they showed up for work Monday morning.

Carlson was Fox’s first-​string, pulling in not only more viewers than anyone else on Fox, but anyone else on cable television. Since his ouster, viewership of Fox’s line-​up — and most significantly the Tucker Carlson Tonight time slot — plummeted. 

Fox News owner Rupert Murdoch made the decision. This sort of self-​sabotage is breathtaking to behold. It’s the second time in recent years that Fox News has ousted its most lucrative talent.

You may remember that Bill O’Reilly, whom Tucker replaced, was let go because of the many sexual misconduct lawsuits Fox had been forced to pay out. It was not immediately clear why Tucker Carlson got the boot. 

Initial theories focused on the Dominion lawsuit, but that seemed implausible to those who followed the story closely. Most viewers believed the firing was ideological in nature. Murdoch is very establishment-​oriented, and Tucker Carlson has increasingly become anti-​establishment. And on his semi-​penultimate show, he lectured about the dominance of Big Pharma advertising on cable TV, and 

This. 

Is. 

Just. 

Not. 

Done.

As the week wore on, a more intriguing theory emerged: Rupert Murdoch did not like Tucker’s Heritage Foundation speech over the weekend, in which the Fox anchor entreated his audience to pray for the future of America. Murdoch is said to hate that sort of thing, especially since he jilted a former future Mrs. Murdoch (that is, a fiancée) for her over-religiosity.

I cannot imagine anyone praying for Fox News.

Not, it seems, even Rupert Murdoch.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Mr. Vehement

global warming, hysteria, religion

He’s vehement — vehement with the force of 600,000 Hiroshima-​class atomic bombs exploding each and every day. 

Because he cares. 

He really does. 

He really cares about putting the days of Wooden Al Gore behind him and ushering in Apoplectic Foaming-​at-​the-​Mouth-​While-​Bleeding-​From-​Every-​Pore Al Gore.

It’s just unfortunate though that whilst ratiocinating at Davos, Mr. Gore destroyed the atmosphere and disarranged the solar system, further accelerating global warming and cooling.

If you’re wondering whether I am now just making stuff up, thank you for noticing; yes: I learned it from the best. But I’m sincere. Okay? I’m emoting very hard right now, for which I fully expect to receive social-​credit points that I can tape to my COVID-​19 passport and wave at the grocery-​store clerk as I pay a thousand dollars for a half-​dozen eggs.

If only vehemence were facts and cogency, Al Gore would be the most empirical, most logical man alive. As it is, a billion flabbergasted refugees have fled before the force of his rhetoric.

If you don’t believe that Gore not whispered but roared, nay, expectorated, the following, etc., at Davos about how the (man-​made) greenhouse effect is trapping “as much extra heat as would be released by 600,000 Hiroshima-​class atomic bombs exploding every single day on the earth!! That’s what’s boiling the oceans, creating these atmospheric rivers, and the rain bombs, and sucking the moisture out of the land, and … and … and —”

… then I refer you to the videotape. Roll it, Hal.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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