No one was in the church at the time of the fire and no injuries were reported, the department stated.
Father William Holiday said he was thankful no one was hurt, detailing the damage otherwise left behind at his church.
“The church for all intents and purposes on the inside is destroyed,” Holiday said. “We did lose some paintings and some statues and things like that, but there were some things in there, there was a picture of the Blessed Virgin Mary in there (…) and it did not have a mark on it.”
Holiday said that he didn’t want to risk conjecture when asked if he thought the church was targeted, stating, “If it’s circumstantial, it’s God’s providence, if it’s possibly intentional, that’s in God’s providence also.”
3, Carter Snead: Reflections on Dobbs, one year later:
It has been a turbulent first year of real successes, but also significant setbacks, for the pro-life movement. For those of us who affirm the intrinsic and inalienable equal dignity of every member of the human family, born and unborn, we must do better in making the case in the public square for a culture of life and civilization of love as a necessary pre-requisite to wise, just, and humane self-governance in a post-Roe world.
4. Kelly Jane Torrance: Wagner Group’s attempted coup in Russia has left Ukraine baffled and captivated:
KYIV — What a time to be in Ukraine.
No weekend is uneventful in a country at war, but this one has been wild.
Never mind the air-raid sirens that kicked it off before curfew Friday night, ringing off and on through 6 a.m. (The death toll from those strikes on Kyiv apartment buildings stands at five.)
The city’s faced those since Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion in February 2022, planning to take the capital in three days.
No, for perhaps the first time in more than a year, events outside the country have captured everyone’s attention for days.
- Glenn H. Reynolds: Jimmy Lai may yet outlast Hong Kong’s evil regime
- On The Plough: Where Are the Churches in Canada’s Euthanasia Experiment?
An entire infrastructure has sprung up around MAID, which euphemizes the procedure as gentle and nonthreatening. Thus you can find “death doulas” who work with MAID patients and their families and friends, counseling those about to die to dress warmly and hydrate before their deaths and encouraging the bereaved to process the experience through grounding themselves in their bodies or expressing themselves through dance. What is actually going on – a doctor killing a patient – is cloaked in anesthetizing therapeutic language, presumably to make the experience more pleasant for everyone involved.
In sharp contrast to this gentle language that seeks to make death seem not so very terrible, proponents of MAID expansion use rather grimmer language to talk about the lives of the disabled and dying. They talk about experiences of dependence, diapers, or drooling as evidence of a life lacking in dignity – and thus a life that should be allowed to be ended by doctor-delivered death. It is not a stretch to see why disabled advocates have argued that the expansion of MAID sends the message that “simply having a disability is reason enough for us to want to die,” that life with a disability is necessarily a life unworthy of being lived. Their fears are already coming to pass.
“Sophia,” a fifty-one-year-old woman who suffered from multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS), could not obtain an apartment that would meet her needs. While MCS is difficult to manage, symptoms can improve significantly with decent housing. “The government sees me as expendable trash, a complainer, useless, and a pain in the ass,” she said in a video a few days before she was killed via MAID in February 2022.
“Denise,” a thirty-one-year-old, was pursuing MAID for similar reasons until a GoFundMe campaign bought her some time. But if she cannot find affordable housing going forward, she may still end up dying by euthanasia.
“Kat,” a woman in her late thirties with a genetic disorder, cannot afford her treatments. “I feel like I’m falling through the cracks so if I’m not able to access health care am I then able to access death care?” she told CTV News. She has been approved for what she calls an “open invitation” to go through with MAID at any time.
Alan, a sixty-one-year-old man, was hospitalized for suicidality and, within a month, applied for MAID. He was killed over the objections of family members and his primary medical provider, who alleged that he did not understand MAID and was coerced into it by hospital staff. The only condition listed on his MAID application was hearing loss.
Sathya, a forty-four-year-old woman who suffered from ALS but for whom natural death was not imminent, was killed via MAID because she could not access home care. “Ultimately, it was not a genetic disease which took me out, it was a system,” she wrote shortly before her death in October 2022.
- Jonathon Van Maren in First Things: How Assisted Suicide Destroys The Loved Ones Left Behind:
The central argument for legal assisted suicide is that it alleviates suffering. But assisted suicide does not reduce suffering in society—it spreads suffering. We are not merely individuals, but members of families and communities. When we lose one of those members, especially prematurely, we all suffer.
Sadness, anger, and even a sense of betrayal mingle with the grief of those who have lost, or are about to lose, a family member to assisted suicide. Their grief is compounded by the fact that there is nothing they could have or can do to stop it—even when they know it is scheduled. Not for nothing was the Globe and Mail’s report earlier this year titled “A complicated grief: Living in the aftermath of a family member’s death by MAID.” Some time ago, an Ottawa doctor told me that he has noticed a difference in the reactions of those whose loved ones die by lethal injection and those whose loved ones die naturally. The trauma and grief of the former is not unlike that of someone who has lost a loved one abruptly in a car accident—or worse.
Every one of us loves someone who has struggled with mental illness at some point in their lives. Most of us know someone who has grappled with suicidal ideation. Many of those closest to me have experienced this, and I shudder to think of the unbearable suffering I would experience if someone I love chose to end their lives in this way. Suicide activists, in their libertarian, hyper-individualist zeal, forget that human beings need each other, and that to offer (and even encourage) the sufferer to sever all bonds of love by state-facilitated suicide is to cause seismic social suffering. More than thirty thousand Canadians have died by lethal injection since assisted suicide was legalized to reduce suffering in our society. Instead, we have seen it multiply a thousandfold.
Increasing aid and support for pro-life pregnancy-resource centers and extending the time a new mother can stay on Medicaid after delivery are among the measures some states have enacted.
- In City Journal: Misplaced Compassion in Oregon:
Oregon lawmakers recently proposed a bill that would radically overhaul the way in which emergency room staff care for homeless patients. The state is already compliant with federal law under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, whereby anyone presenting in an ER with an emergent condition must receive treatment but discharge timing is left to the care teams’ discretion. State Senate Bill 1076, however, contained provisions asking for ERs to release people identifying as homeless only during daytime hours from October to April, and set up discharge planning that included transportation, food and clothing, signing up for health insurance, and mental-health services follow-up. Though Oregon has a big homeless problem, the bill ignored harsh trade-offs for ERs that could make an already bad situation worse. The legislature has delayed the proposal, sending it to a task force for review, but it’s worth considering its provisions in detail.
A rural ER physician wrote, “Oregon ERs are suffering from unprecedented ER overcrowding and boarding. Multiple hospitals have created overflow areas in spaces like cafeterias….Our overburdened healthcare system simply doesn’t have the resources, room or staff to become shelter space during the winter.” Another ER physician wrote that “we are already struggling more than ever to keep up with the demands of our department. We simply do not have the capacity to do the things this bill proposes, and the health of our community will suffer as a consequence.” Administrator reports from multiple health systems, as well as Oregon’s low bed capacity per capita, reinforce these testimonies.
Yet community-action groups, health-equity advocates, and local volunteers largely backed the bill. They cited the need for better documentation of homeless persons’ medical history, improved coordination with local shelters, and avoiding deaths from wintertime cold—all reasonable concerns. Missing, though, was a recognition of current health-care constraints. A supportive Portland resident wrote that the “question at hand is not whether SB 1076 places unfair burdens on business activity, it’s whether SB 1076 will save peoples’ lives. Undeniably, the answer is yes!” In an unwittingly contradictory statement, a community-engagement officer wrote, “I hope that the committee will join me and many others in advocating for access to healthcare that is of good quality and accessible for all Oregonians. SB 1076 will seek to create policy that will better inform decisions when dealing with the unique livelihoods of patients experiencing homelessness.” Finally, a community-action executive offered the farcical assurance that “nothing in this bill…prevents hospitals from discharging patients as they please,” adding, “It’s also not going to be doctors and nurses doing this work. It will be care managers and case coordinators.” One wonders if this person read the bill in question or has ever been inside an ER.
- Fr. Paul Scalia: Pride and Prejudice:
Armando Valladares was initially one of Fidel Castro’s supporters. He even got a job in the Office of the Ministry of Communications for the Revolutionary Government. But in 1960 things changed drastically. It happened that everybody else in his workplace had placed an I’m with Fidel sign on their desks. Doing so wasn’t officially required. But it was, you know, required. Valladares refused. He didn’t condemn or speak out against Castro. He simply declined to display the sign. For that simple refusal, he was sentenced to prison for 30 years. He spent 22 years in the worst conditions until his release and exile in 1982.
The story of Valladares comes to mind in the month of June. As the displays at stores, offices, and city hall proclaim, June is “Pride Month,” dedicated to the celebration of the LGBTQ+ community. Of course, people are free to celebrate whatever they want. That’s just a fact in a diverse society. But what happens to those who decline to celebrate Pride Month? Who don’t harbor any ill will but simply view human sexuality differently? Who don’t fly the flag – or put the sign on their desk?
Pride is intolerant. That’s a statement about the vice itself before any consideration of our cultural situation. The proud man can’t tolerate any criticism or opposition. Pride is the expansion of the self to the exclusion of others. As C.S. Lewis observes, pride is “essentially competitive.” It won’t brook anything getting in its way. June’s Pride demands the surrender of any competing view of the human person.
- Fr. Peter John Cameron, O.P.: When you’re lonely, this is the devotion you most need
- Fr. Cameron again: Fathered Past Our Fears:
Do not be afraid of those who kill the body, Jesus encourages us. For, alluding to some of the littlest and least significant of God’s creatures — sparrows — Jesus continues: Not one of them falls to the ground without your Father’s knowledge.
We need to hear this, because there’s something major we have in common with sparrows. We fall. We fail. Wrestling with temptations … giving into them … we crash and burn. And it leaves us feeling worthless. Disgrace leads to denial.
But the only one really who can kill the soul is ourselves when we give up on our soul and its God-given destiny. St. Thomas Aquinas tells us that the reason why Jesus says Do not fear is “because we should only fear evil. Do not fear, because if your truth is not well known right away, eventually it will be well known.”
- Babylon Bee: ‘I Accomplished Nothing Today!’ Says Mom Who Spent All Day Nurturing Infinitely Precious Human Souls:
“It sometimes feels like I’m not using my full potential,” said Mrs. Walker, who daily lives to raise her children in wisdom and the fear of God. “I feel like I’m in the same narrow rut,” sighed the incredible woman entrusted to introduce the entire universe to her children.