Religion-in-news stories you may have missed

The news cycle moves so swiftly that it’s easy to miss major developments or have a chance to reflect on them. Here’s news from the past few days worth contemplating about.

Justice Kagan called “treasonous,” speaks out. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, in a rare interview in early September, warned that the Dobbs decision overturning Roe v. Wade could possibly lead to the repeal of other basic rights. She pointed out that the majority’s “reasoning” in Dobbs — that the right to abortion wasn’t established in the nation’s history — could be used to overturn similar rights. “That’s the entirely of the majority’s reasoning [in Dobbs],” she told New York University School of Law Professor Melissa Murray. “Then you say the same thing for contraception. then you can say the same thing for interracial marriage. Then you could say the same thing for gay marriage.”

ProPublica earlier disclosed that Kelly Shackelford of the First Liberty Institute has described Kagan’s embrace of enforceable ethics rules for the Supreme Court “somewhat treasonous.” At the law school event, Kagan joked that it was a little like being called “somewhat pregnant.”

Alito’s issues. Speaking of justices, it was revealed last week that Samuel Alito, who wrote the Dobbs decision and has been the second most frequent offender of judicial ethics (remember the upside down U.S. flag and the “Appeal to Heaven” flag?), was hosted by a rightwing German “princess” in her castle in July 2023. Alito indicated on his annual financial disclosure form, released in early September, that he had received a $900 ticket from her to attend the local music festival. She stated publicly: “He is pro-life in a time where the majority follows the culture of death. Christians believe in life. The Zeitgeist is nihilistic and believes in destruction.” She added a skull emoji to her text message.

Alito has also reported on positions he held in 2023, including being honorary chair of the Advisory Council of the Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic School of Law, as well as an honorary member of the advisory board of the Franciscan Monastery for the Holy Land. This is one man in whom “the dogma lives loudly within” 

More Catholic Church scandals break. That these scandals go on and on is all the more reason to feel indignation over the lack of consequences for the Church. The New York Times just reported that, years after his death, more than two dozen women over this past summer have indicated being sexually harassed or assaulted by a revered French priest, Abbé Pierre. He was once voted the third-greatest French person of all time, and parks and schools are named for him. 

According to  reports, he groped and pawed little girls and made them watch him masturbate, He also engaged in abuse of grown women. Yet he has been known for his good works. “Abbé Pierre’s charitable success protected him,” muses historian Agnes Desmazieres, who’s written a book about sexual abuse in the Catholic Church. His abuse was an “open secret,” according to another French commentator.

That exposé followed another horrifying report earlier in the week that the Pacific islands, which Pope Francis visited in early September, have become a “dumping ground” for priests accused or even convicted of abuse. More than 30 such Catholic priests and missionaries were sent to these remote island nations to minister to vulnerable populations. The first public accusation of abuse by these dumped clerics was made in 2022 by Felix Fremlin of Fiji, who as a child, told his father missionaries were abusing him. Tragically, he was not believed and was even beaten. “If you say something against the Church, it’s like saying something against God,” he notes. Such is the power of religion.

Project 2025 warnings continue. Project 2025, a 900-page policy playbook written by the Heritage Foundation, would raise income taxes on lower earners, cap Medicaid, eliminate Head Start and Student Loan Forgiveness, phase out Title 1 (which provides education aid to poor states), repeal the Inflation Reduction Act and create an imperial presidency. It would ban the abortion pill — the most common method of U.S. abortion care, accounting for 63 percent — thereby denying many women in states with bans abortion care as well as crippling the ability of abortion clinics in states where abortion is legal to adequately serve displaced patients.

I recently learned of a new threat, through John Nichols of the Madison, Wis., Cap Times: Project 2025’s plan to defund NPR, PBS and other public broadcasters. Nichols reports that there is a parallel plan to end the status of NPR and Pacifica radio stations as “noncommercial education stations,” which could deny them their current channel numbers at the low end of the radio spectrum (88 to 92 FM), and open those channels up for “the sort of religious programming that already claims roughly 42 percent of the airwaves that the Federal Communications Commission reserves for noncommercial broadcasting,” Nichols writes. Project 2025 would give the president complete power over agencies such as the FCC.

How do you think our nation got to the precipice we’re at with Christian nationalism? The domination of public airwaves by religious broadcasters and their friends at hate radio, has dumbed down Americans and deprived them of information. As strongmen have long known, if you can sow distrust in facts and experts, you can create chaos and better control citizens.

 “Alternative facts” then replace reality — and, as FFRF’s bumper sticker points out, “Religion is the original alternative fact.”