Plus: Resisting assisted suicide; the truth about child welfare; frozen embryos.
- Agam Berger in the Wall Street Journal: I Kept My Freedom in Hamas’s Captivity
I learned, as my forebears did, that imprisonment can’t overwhelm the inner spiritual life. Our faith and covenant with God, the story we remember on Passover, is more powerful than any cruel captor. Even as Hamas tried to coerce me into converting to Islam—at times, forcing a hijab on my head—they couldn’t take away my soul.
I chose to observe every Jewish fast possible. My captors found religious texts among newspapers and maps left in the field by IDF soldiers and brought them to me, trying to learn any information and Hebrew they could. They eventually abandoned a siddur, a Jewish prayer book, for which I fashioned a protective case out of the leg of a tattered and unwearable pair of pants. I kept kosher, which at times meant refusing nonkosher meat when I was hungry. I chose not to light a fire on Shabbat to cook for my captors. They stopped letting me cook altogether once they realized it was something I enjoyed.
My fellow scout Liri Albag and I marked Passover together last year. Held in a small room with no natural light, we did what we could to set the holiday mood. We cleaned our room and adorned the table with napkins and other small “decorations” made from scraps of paper. As a surprise, Liri wrote me a makeshift Passover Haggadah, the text that recounts our ancestors’ journey out of slavery. Throughout captivity we were moved from tunnels to apartments and, in some, had limited access to television and radio. On Passover we heard that people had set us a table in Hostage Square in Tel Aviv. Liri listened to her mother’s voice on the airwaves. We cried, then sat down to eat our own “bread of affliction,” the Haggadah’s description of the matzah our fathers ate in Egypt. Our corn flour pitas united us with them.
2. Nasser Hussain: Canceling Easter
In England, an elementary school decided to cancel its Easter celebrations in the name of “diversity and inclusion,” reminding us of the enduring institutional strength of this ideology.
Instead of Easter, the school opted to commemorate “Refugee Week,” a gesture meant to celebrate inclusivity. But to position these two events in opposition—to replace one with the other—only deepens social divisions and stokes identitarian resentments. One might reasonably wonder whether such decisions are still naive missteps or have taken on a more deliberate, ideological character. . . .
To frame a Christian holiday like Easter as somehow exclusionary or oppressive, while simultaneously championing causes like refugee solidarity, is not only misguided—it’s intellectually incoherent. What happens when refugees themselves are Christian? Or when they find comfort and belonging in shared cultural rituals like Easter? In Britain, racist attacks on immigrants are rarely, if ever, driven by Christian zealotry. More often, they stem from economic anxiety, political disaffection, or social breakdown.
According to a Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW) report issued last week, Catholic priests in several dioceses are now required to go to the nearest police station for interrogation on a weekly basis. Some of these priests have said they are assigned a permanent surveillance official and are warned that they cannot leave their community without authorization.
This last provision is especially affecting dioceses with large numbers of exiled priests, such as Matagalpa, which have relied on priests from other dioceses coming in on a weekly basis to serve parishes with exiled pastors.
Although physician-assisted suicide is still illegal in most parts of the world, the practice is currently legal in about a dozen countries, including Canada, Germany, Spain, and Belgium, along with 10 U.S. states and the District of Columbia.
The phenomenon is causing growing concern for patients’ rights advocates and disability rights advocates who have warned that jurisdictions that allow assisted suicide are failing to provide necessary life-affirming care for vulnerable populations in need of it and are rather encouraging suicide as a cheaper, quicker, and easier option.
According to Matt Vallière, executive director of the Patients Rights Action Fund, U.S. state-level assisted suicide programs are discriminatory against people with life-threatening conditions and are a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Vallière spoke at the conference along with Krista Carr, CEO of Inclusion Canada, during an April 4 panel moderated by EWTN News President Montse Alvarado.
Illustrating the problem, Vallière pointed out that many states do “not guarantee palliative care,” yet “they will pay for every instance of assisted suicide.”
“I don’t call that autonomy, I call that eugenics,” he emphasized.
In Canada, Carr’s organization has filed a lawsuit against Canada’s medical assistance in dying (MAID) program. The lawsuit focuses on the country’s expansion of MAID to include people with disabilities that are not immediately life-threatening.
Those who are facing death should be given adequate palliative care as opposed to being assisted in suicide, according to the Catholic Medical Association (CMA) of Britain.
The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill is making its way through the Committee Stage in parliament, the sponsor Member of Parliament (MP), Kim Leadbeater, has asked for a series of amendments concerning the role of doctors and the reporting of assisted suicides.
On Sunday, Catholic churches in England and Wales read a statement from Cardinal Vincent Nichols in which he noted the “deeply flawed process undergone” in pushing the legislation.
He said the Bill will “fundamentally change” many of the key relationships in the way of life in Britain, “within the family, between doctor and patient, within the health service.”
This week, the CMA issued a statement affirming Catholic Moral Teaching holds that it is always wrong to make a direct attack on innocent human life.
“Assisted suicide constitutes such an attack and can therefore never be condoned. Also, in keeping with the natural moral law, the fundamental right to life is a core element of the United Nations Charter in its Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). This right cannot be conferred but is inherent by virtue of our membership of the human family. Without the right to life there can be no logical duty to respect any other right,” the statement said.
The CMA also said the term “assisted dying” is used in a euphemistic way in the proposed Bill, since what it actually proposes is assisted suicide.
- Naomi Schaefer Riley: The Truth About Child Welfare in America
Gavin Peterson, [a] 12-year-old Utah boy [] died last July 9 after being tortured and starved by his father, his father’s girlfriend, and his older brother. Ten years prior, Gavin went to live with his father and father’s girlfriend after he was found as a toddler wandering outside alone and his mother pleaded guilty to exposing her children to illegal drugs.
Over the years, school employees and others frequently called the Division of Child and Family Services about Gavin—but DCFS decided these reports did not meet the criteria to open an investigation. When Gavin began helping cafeteria workers at his school clean up, they realized he was so hungry he was eating the food they left behind. One worker told local news, “He would hover over the trash . . . and wait and watch for something to be thrown away that was almost fully intact. And he’d grab it and take off.”
A school nurse saw that the skin on Gavin’s fingers was bitten so severely that his hands were infected. She and the principal both called DCFS. Shortly after these reports were made, Gavin came to school with a chipped tooth. Then in August 2023, his father withdrew him from school.
Remarkably, like many states, Utah allows parents to remove children from school, no questions asked—even if the family has a history of abuse or neglect. Parents’ rights advocates may cheer this, but preventing authorities and other adults from helping children also has severe consequences.
A year after he was taken out of school, Gavin was brought to the emergency room. He died the same day. Police investigators concluded that he had been locked in a room at his home without bedding or blankets, beaten and starved, while the father, father’s girlfriend, and brother—all now charged with homicide—monitored him on multiple surveillance cameras.
Gavin’s death is part of a tragic national trend: a sustained increase in deaths due to child abuse and neglect—a trend that continues as states release data for 2023–2024. There is a terrible through line to many of these cases: People knew, including representatives from government agencies tasked with protecting children.
- Emily Putnam-Hornstein & Naomi Schaefer Riley: The dangerous myth that poverty is the cause of child abuse
Why does child abuse happen? A new public service announcement says most people think it’s a “bad parent problem,” but the ad suggests “the root causes may be different than you think.” This message from Prevent Child Abuse America goes on to explain that child abuse is the result of families’ lack of financial resources — a problem that can be fixed with a variety of universal family support programs.
If only it were that simple. Sadly, this claim misrepresents research, and this script (which is recited by a series of child narrators) will only contribute to the misinformation about child maltreatment that seems to be guiding public sentiment and public policy. . . .
The ad’s cheerful children suggest that preventing child abuse hinges on keeping “families out of crisis,” yet the financial challenges faced by parents who abuse and neglect their children are deeply intertwined with a web of other social problems, not just economic hardship. The most common conditions of maltreatment include parental drug and alcohol abuse, severe mental illness, domestic violence and the presence of nonrelative males in a home. The offending parents often grew up in abusive homes themselves. The ad’s framing also conveniently ignores abuse that occurs in middle-class and affluent homes.
- Ericka Andersen: Beyond IVF: The Untold Fate of Frozen Embryos
My firstborn was immediately transferred from the petri dish to the womb. But for 2 years, my daughter was one of the others who sat frozen in time, waiting for a chance. Every time I look at her sweet face, I can’t help but imagine who else there is …
12. Gunman Shot Kansas Catholic Priest ‘Intentionally and With Premeditation,’ Prosecutor Says
The priest had served in the archdiocese for more than 20 years. Kansas City Archbishop Joseph Naumann said after the shooting last week that Father Carasala “was a devoted and zealous pastor” who “faithfully served” the archdiocese.
“His love for Christ and his Church was evident in how he ministered to his people with great generosity and care,” the archbishop said. “His parishioners, friends, and brother priests will deeply miss him.”
16. Francis X. Maier: There Will Come Soft Rains
Elon Musk, and the gifted men and women like him, personify our species: both its strengths and its brokenness. We may one day go to Mars. We might someday colonize whole planets. But we won’t escape ourselves, because we can’t. Ever since Eden, we drag our sins and delusions along with us.
Our tools – our technology and science – can ease our burdens or destroy us, but they can never redeem us. They can never make us whole or more than what we are. And every attempt to use them for that purpose, every attempt to make ourselves into little gods, backfires in a revenge of unintended consequences because we’re not gods, we’ll never be gods, and we were made for something more than this life.
- Carl R. Trueman: Protestants Need Virtue Ethics
Many of the challenges today circle around the issue of what it means to be human. Human beings have always been to some extent creatures of the technology they have developed, whether an ax made from flint or an iPhone. Thus at a time of rapid and unceasing technological change, the very notion of human nature can itself become volatile. The confused executive orders of the Trump administration, where transgenderism is out but IVF is in, are emblematic of our moment in time and an excellent example of the problem. Taste and tech, not a stable concept of human nature, are driving these policies.
We must return to reflecting on and cultivating virtue. While virtue theory has deep Catholic roots and has made significant inroads into the secular academy, it has yet to shape a lot of Protestant thought. Keith Stanglin’s excellent book Ethics Beyond Rules is counterevidence to this, but it is outstanding partly because an orthodox Protestant with an interest in virtue theory is uncommon.
There are some obvious reasons for this. Reflection on virtue is regarded by many as a Catholic preoccupation and is thus a victim, so to speak, of the Reformation divide. Then there are reasons internal to Protestant theology: A preoccupation with virtue and virtues might tilt toward self-righteousness and/or justification by works. But the idea to which the virtues point—a properly formed character that has unified moral intuitions that shape a person’s response to any particular situation—seems vital as we now live in a world where the moral challenges are as novel as they are unpredictable. Virtues make us human. If we are to be humans in this dehumanized world, we need to be virtuous.
18. Asma T. Uddin: When caregiving becomes worship — a different kind of Ramadan
This year, however, Ramadan arrived with an unexpected companion. Just one week before the crescent moon appeared, my husband was diagnosed with acute leukemia. In an instant, our carefully planned spiritual journey was completely rewritten.
The diagnosis came with little warning — a routine blood test, urgent phone calls and then the world as we knew it tilted on its axis. Suddenly, conversations about fasting intentions were replaced by discussions of treatment protocols. The anticipated spiritual retreat became something else entirely — a crash course in mortality. . . .
It wasn’t long before I began feeling a creeping sense of guilt. Was I failing Ramadan? Was I missing the opportunity for spiritual growth that this month promises? These questions lingered as I moved through days that felt nothing like the Ramadans I had known before.
Then one afternoon, as I was helping my husband shower — his body weakened by the aggressive treatment — something shifted in my understanding. There was nothing dramatic about the moment. I was simply holding him steady, carefully washing his back, mindful of the new PICC line that delivered his medication. He was tired, vulnerable and completely dependent on my assistance. And in that ordinary act of care, I felt something profoundly sacred.
It occurred to me that perhaps this was worship, too — this attentiveness to human fragility, this bearing witness to suffering, this commitment to sustain another person through their darkest hours. Perhaps the essence of ibadah (worship) wasn’t just in the formal rituals but in these acts of service rendered with full awareness of our complete dependence on something greater than ourselves.
19. Composer Sir James MacMillan speaks at CUA on beauty, music, and faith
“When a composer writes music for the choir,” he said, “it’s not written as an act of egotism or narcissism. It’s a great responsibility for the composer when he or she writes the liturgy … you are writing to carry the thoughts and prayers and meditations of the people of God, to the altar of God.”
“The Church has to be aware … that music is part of the liturgy,” he continued. “It’s not an add-on for aesthetic values. It’s an absolute central core part of what it means to be a creative Church.”
As a professor, my primary vocation is to teach young adults skills that will prepare them to excel in their careers. The implicit assumption society makes is that professional excellence requires formal training, whereas excellence in the rest of life does not. There is no Harvard School of Leisure, after all. Work demands discipline and training; nonwork is easy and enjoyable and comes naturally.
Our higher-education system, including my university, operates on this assumption. But to me, it’s very questionable. Leisure is not at all straightforward or easy. I have no interest in frittering away a minute of my day on fruitless pursuits. I want everything I do to be generative. I want to use my nonwork activities, as much as my work ones, to become a wiser, happier, more effective, better person.