Twenty Five Things that Caught My Eye Today: An Afghani Christian’s Plea, Mexico Legalizes Abortion & More

1.  An Afghani Christian pleads for help: 

He says the Taliban executed his father. And his brother. Now, they are hunting for him.

“Please do something,” he wrote in a plea to CNA.

He is a young Afghan, one of countless thousands still desperate to escape his country.

He is a doubly marked man. First, because he briefly worked for the U.S. military and other allied forces. Second, because he is a Muslim convert to Christianity. That is a capital crime in Afghanistan.

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5. The Telegraph: Pandemic prompts surge in family breakdowns and foster-care referrals

6. Naomi Schaefer Riley: Foster Care Works

It might seem obvious that children reported for maltreatment are more likely to be in danger, and that removing them from dangerous situations reduces their likelihood of death. But a growing chorus of activists argues that the child-welfare system is unnecessary and harmful. The upEND movement, for instance, proposes repealing all mandatory reporting laws. The authors of the group’s recent manifesto note, “Reporting families to family policing systems opens the door for increased policing and surveillance, and ultimately begins the process through which families experience harm, trauma, and punishment.”

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The magical thinking offered by these advocates flies in the face of what we know about families reported for maltreatment. They are not simply the targets of a racist system that wants to punish poor minority families. Maltreatment, particularly in young children, is dangerous. And neglect, far from being a byproduct of poverty, is often the result of substance abuse or mental illness. 

7. Carter Snead: Critics of Texas’s convoluted abortion law have a point. The solution is to overturn Roe v. Wade.

8. Salvatore Cordileone: Our duty to challenge Catholic politicians who support abortion rights

9. Albert Mohler: A Profile of Moral Collapse: President Biden, Abortion, and the Culture of Death

Joe Biden has made clear, more than once, that he personally believes life begins at conception.

Until last Friday, that is, when, in condemning the Texas law, President Biden said: “I respect those who believe that life begins at conception – I respect that. Don’t agree but I respect that.”

With those words, President Biden, the “devout Roman Catholic,” threw the doctrine and teaching of the Roman Catholic Church out the window. Those of us who have been watching the moral collapse of Joe Biden knew this moment had to come.

10. Tara Thieke: The Last Days of Women

For decades, every aspirational middle-class female was blasted with the message that she could “have it all.” Yet women no longer want the “all.” Somewhere in the past few decades, the logical consequences of the liberal consumer revolution began to reveal themselves. “Children will slow you down; relationships are emotional labor; have sex with strangers. Better yet: start an OnlyFans and treat yourself. Also? You’re not actually a woman. You’re a vagina-owner! Enjoy your new life partners, SSRIs and therapy.”

A parallel story, of course, can be told about boys. But though we do little about it, even leftists at least acknowledge that masculinity is “in crisis.” Girls are not granted this concession: they face the peculiar circumstance of being simultaneously driven mad and told that it’s progress.

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12. USCCB: A Better Kind of Politics

13. California professor sues university over vaccine mandate, citing natural immunity

“I feel like I’m being treated unequally,” Kheriaty said. “If my immunity is as good, indeed, very likely better, than that conferred by the vaccine, there doesn’t seem to be any rational basis for discriminating against my form of immunity and requiring me to get a different form of immunity.”

14. D.C’s Catholic Cardinal Wilton Gregory makes a rare comment on Joe Biden and abortion in response to a report’s question: 

“The Catholic Church teaches, and has taught, that human life begins at conception, so the president is not demonstrating Catholic teaching,” said Gregory, the archbishop of Washington.

15.  Joel Kotkin: The Fading Family

Margaret Mead once said, “no matter how many communes anyone invents, the family always creeps back.” But today’s trajectory is not promising. 

16. Former governor George Pataki on Cuomo, Religious Freedom, and NY’s Need For a ‘Change in Direction’

17. Robert VerBruggen: On the 25th Anniversary of Welfare Reform, a Study Asks How It Worked

In general, though, this is a solid blow against the “raging extreme poverty” theory that’s taken root over the past five years or so, especially when seen in light of the problems with alternative data sources. There are many consequences of welfare reform, some good and some bad, but, as this new paper shows, driving lots of families into extreme poverty is probably not one of them.

18. Howard Husock: Is civil society becoming a luxury good?

Civil society is, however, much more than a means for providing select functions—as important as providing food for the hungry or shelter for victims of abuse might be. Civil society takes many forms, including religious institutions, historical societies, and park conservancies. These organizations not only serve communities but also help forge community—bringing neighbors together for shared purposes, providing a reason for them to pool their charitable dollars, and establishing social trust.

Put another way, communities without civil-society institutions are at risk for the alienation and anonymity that foster criminals, even for the sheer absence of comity and neighborliness.  

19. Bishop Oscar Cantú: Minorities need health care, not life-ending prescriptions:

There is a surprisingly large amount of information we don’t know about patients seeking end of life drugs, including mental health evaluations, complications with dosage or if pain management or other alternatives were explored.

California does not require physicians to complete documentation. Doctors can fill out the documents, or not. There is no penalty for missing or for incomplete paperwork.

That is too many unknowns in what is, literally, a matter of life and death.

How we care for the sick and dying speaks volumes about who we are as a people. Californians need to ask ourselves if the health care “choices” we offer to our people affirm the value of their lives or tell them they no longer matter.

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21. Daily Signal: In 2 Blue States, This College Teaches Students About Western Civilization

But it’s not just the curriculum and the classroom methodology that make Thomas Aquinas College different. Despite having campuses in liberal California and Massachusetts, this small Catholic college is bucking trends in higher ed.

As students across America must obtain higher and higher loans to pay for higher education, Thomas Aquinas College is committed to ensuring that no student needs to take out more than $19,000 in loans. It encourages religious practices by making Mass available daily. And it offers only single-sex dorms.

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23. A ‘Great Books’ list for children? A Catholic teacher takes up the task

We tend to think of children’s literature as just for young ones, as if they’re a stepping stone to the “real” literature. And that couldn’t be further from the truth! First of all, [when it comes to] great art, it doesn’t matter who it’s for. Art is art. It doesn’t matter if it’s “Goodnight Moon” or Homer; it’s going to affect us differently, and it’s going to have different elements and features, but it’s still art. Second of all, some of the important adult literature has been embraced by children for centuries, like “The Odyssey.” So we have to stop thinking of it as, “This is for children, and this is for adults.”

24. Tevi Troy: Presidents and the Age Question

25. Dad Buys Ice-Cream Truck for His Children with Down’s Syndrome and Hires Them to Run the Business