Red Tsunami: Constitution Check on church property disputes...more

Red Tsunami: GOP gains across the board in historic sweep 

 Voters' Verdict Explodes Democratic Myths

Yazidi and Christian women slaves sold for £27, ISIS document reveals ..."And these are not just grown women," Harrison said. "The youngest girl we heard of being taken for rape was three years old."...

No Bishop Will Die for Religious Liberty
  A few years ago, Cardinal Francis George, the Catholic archbishop of Chicago, issued a dire prophecy about religious liberty in America:

“I expect to die in bed, my successor will die in prison and his successor will die a martyr in the public square. His successor will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.”

Well, we all must hope and pray it doesn’t come to that, but if it should, we Christians must hope and pray that Catholic bishops, and all Christians, will accept persecution and martyrdom before betraying the faith in the face of pressure from the State.

There is a bad omen on this front from Catholic colleges (though not yet from the bishops). Rusty Reno writes that more of them — including Notre Dame — are slowly but surely making their peace with same-sex marriage. What sparked his column was the announcement by the president of Creighton, Reno’s former employer, that it was going to offer benefits to same-sex couples, but that this should not be seen as endorsement of same-sex marriage. Reno points out that no bishop is compelling Catholic colleges to do this; the Archbishop of Omaha strongly criticized the Jesuit-run college for its move. Nor is the State forcing it; Creighton is in Nebraska, which does not have gay marriage...

The Latest Targets of Sexual Radicalism
...The latest twist is California’s new “Affirmative Consent” law that would turn virtually all consensual sex into rape. To avoid a conviction, men must, at each “stage” of a sexual encounter, “demonstrate they obtained verbal ‘affirmative consent’ before engaging in sexual activity.” “Since most couples have engaged in sex without ‘verbal’ consent,” writes attorney Hans Bader, “supporters of the bill are effectively redefining most people, and most happily-married couples, as rapists.”..

Constitution Check: Should the Supreme Court get involved in church property disputes?   ...The biggest event in this schism occurred in 2008, when the leadership of the entire Fort Worth, Texas, diocese led a break with the parent church, and took with them out of that denomination the property of 47 parish churches in 24 counties – property worth more than $100 million overall. The parent church fought back, but ultimately lost in the Texas Supreme Court. From now on, and in this case, that state court ruled, church property disputes were to be decided by the “neutral principles” approach, no longer deferring to church structure arrangements. Examining the trust document under which the parent church had claimed ownership of the local property, the state court said that did not square with state civil law.

With support from a wide array of mainstream religious organizations and advocacy group, the Episcopal Church took the case to the Supreme Court, arguing that the time had come for the court to abandon the “neutral principles” approach and return to the deference approach. The parent church, it contended, had done everything it could to establish the parent’s dominion over property, and yet that was not enough.

The breakaway congregations in Fort Worth and their bishop urged the Supreme Court to stay out of the case, noting that the Justices had passed up other appeals on the issue, and commenting that the dispute in Texas has not yet become final.

When the Supreme Court declined to hear the case, it provided no explanation. It may have been that the Justices did not think the case was finished in lower courts...