Twenty-Five Things That Caught My Eye Today: Disney & China, Religious Liberty & Foster Care & More (September 9, 2020)

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2. Shrine in memory of aborted children dedicated in Mexico

The main goal of [Mexican pro-life association] Los Inocentes de María, Del Río said, “is to combat violence against children, both in the womb and in early childhood, newborns and up to two, five, six years old, when lamentably many are murdered,” some are even “thrown into sewers, onto vacant lots.”

So far the association has buried 267 preborn children, newborns and infants.

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5. Rafael A. Mangual: A Tale of Two Cities, Indeed

Through August 30, the city’s 290 murders and 1,004 shooting incidents represent year-to-date increases of 33.6 percent and 87 percent, respectively. Manhattan has seen 52 murders and 135 shootings this year. About half (65) of those shootings took place in just three of the borough’s 22 precincts—the 23rd, 25th, and 32nd—all in Harlem. In those precincts, killings are up more than 100 percent, year-to-date. By contrast, Manhattan’s 6th, 19th, and 20th precincts—which cover the West Village, Upper East Side, and Upper West Side—have seen just two murders and three shootings combined.

In Brooklyn, where murders are up 72 percent (more than double the citywide increase of 33.6 percent), we see a similar disparity. Just four of Kings County’s 23 precincts—the 67th (East Flatbush), 73rd (Brownsville), 75th (East New York), and 77th (Crown Heights)—account for more than 57 percent of the borough’s 114 homicides, and just under half (219) of its 441 shooting incidents through August 30. Of course, not all Brooklynites are dodging bullets. Park Slope (78th precinct), Kensington (66th), Brooklyn Heights (84th), and Greenpoint (94th), have seen a combined total of just three murders and 15 shootings.

6. Naomi Schaefer Riley: As Remote Learning Continues, How Do We Spot Child Abuse and Neglect?

What if we visited homes that had a substantiated abuse or neglect case closed within the past year? A review of 16 studies found that children “maltreated previously were approximately six times more likely to experience recurrent maltreatment than children who had not previously been maltreated.” Such an intervention might require emergency legislation, but it would be well worth it.

Critics would no doubt suggest that checking on closed cases would unfairly target poor or minority families. In fact, I would guess that was one reason why the original interventions were so broad in the first place. But at some point, we are going to have to acknowledge that we actually do know something about which kids are more likely to be at risk. The only question is how many kids are we willing to let twist in the wind before we do something to help them? 

7. R. J. Snell: Ingratitude, Mob Violence, and Providence

Rebellion, or revolution, impossibly attempts to create its own order, “which for all intents and purposes means that we wish to impose our own will upon the world,” and in doing so views human experience as will and power struggle, but certainly without room for gratefulness. All is power, power is the father of all, a sentiment gleefully acknowledged and celebrated by the various -isms of the moment. Marxism, postmodernism, post-colonialism, the various “studies” of race, gender, and class—these are obsessed with power structures and how to wrest power to oneself for exercise against others. Alas, too many students in contemporary schools and colleges have been taught by the epigones of Marx and Nietzsche that justice is power—hegemony—and that war is the basis of politics.

8. Deseret News: What family policy might look like if Biden and Harris are elected

[W. Bradford Wilcox, a University of Virginia sociologist and director of The National Marriage Project] believes Biden’s vision for increasing access to child care and lowering its cost for low-income families by using tax credits and subsidies could have unwelcome consequences. “This is a vision where young children spend more time in daycare and where parents who wish to care for their children at home receive no support from the government. This is both unfair and, more importantly, unwise as young children benefit from more time with their parents and kin, rather than less.”

9. Jim Stockstill: Gold Star Families Have Served Our Country, Now It’s Our Turn To Serve Them

Hearing “free college” for everyone from liberals, socialists and other “politicians” (who probably never served or had that knock on their door) gave me the idea of the Eagle 1 Program for this president who genuinely cares about our veterans and Gold Star Families.

The Eagle 1 Program:

Meeting entry requirements and maintaining pre-established academic criteria, any member of the immediate family of the service member who died or is 75 percent disabled will have the entire cost of their selected college, university or trade school paid for by the federal government.

10. “Our Lady of Stono” depicts individuals who played prominent role in black Catholic history

11. RFE/RL Relaunches Operations In Hungary Amid Drop In Media Freedom

Over the past 10 years, the government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban has taken control of most of the country’s press outlets either directly or indirectly.

Public television and radio stations and the state news agency came under government control in 2011.

In 2019, about 500 private media outlets were concentrated into the Central European Press and Media Foundation (KESMA), which has close ties to the Orban government.

12. Lori Windham: Punishing Catholic foster agencies is no way to uphold LGBTQ rights

Excluding a Catholic ministry and its dedicated foster parents from serving vulnerable children doesn’t create any more opportunities for LGBTQ families to foster. In fact, the city’s actions disproportionately harm minority and disadvantaged kids: Roughly 70% of the foster kids and 60% of the foster parents who partner with the Catholic Church in Philadelphia are people of color.

13. New York Times: The Pandemic Is a ‘Mental Health Crisis’ for Parents

Before the pandemic, anxiety and depression affected somewhere between 10 to 25 percent of women during pregnancy and in the year after childbirth. Two studies from Canada show those figures have skyrocketed since the shutdown: One study of nearly 2,000 pregnant women showed that 37 percent were showing clinically significant levels of depression, and 57 percent were showing clinically significant levels of anxiety. Another study of 900 women, some pregnant and some with newborns, showed that rates of depression increased to 40 percent from 15 percent during the pandemic, and rates of anxiety rose to a whopping 72 percent from 29 percent.

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15. Tori K. Smith: How the Free Market and Civil Society Solved the COVID-19 Face Mask Shortage

First and foremost, the cloth mask shortage was met with both an economic and philanthropic response almost instantly.

Due to a lack of consistent demand in the U.S. prior to the pandemic, mask production had largely moved offshore.

Restarting that production and ensuring it was profitable could have been difficult for businesses because single-use masks (often imported from China) could be purchased for as little as $4 per box of 100. The opposite proved to be true.

The increased demand was met with an increase in price per mask. Plus, companies selling masks advertised their plans to make charitable contributions, justifying the higher prices.

Spontaneous charitable donations by individuals and religious organizations also were unexpected, but they demonstrate the strength of civil society in America and our willingness to chip in when others are in need.

16. Joseph G. Allen, Jack Spengler and Jose Cedeño-Laurent: Want to buy schools time? Open the windows.

Opening windows sounds too simple to be true, as Fauci pointed out. But in this case, simplicity is elegant — grounded in science and risk-reduction principles. It’s science distilled to actionable measures. Hand-washing isn’t complicated either, but it works.

The window on opening schools is closing. Opening windows now, in the so-called shoulder season when weather is mild, can buy schools time to make the permanent and necessary upgrades to ventilation systems before winter arrives.

17. Sr. Deirdre Byrne’s Gift of Witness

18. More people fell behind on rent in September

19. Chris Arnade: The Non-Voter

Each election there are three choices and the winner is always not voting. In 2016 100 million people chose this option, far far more than people who voted for Trump. Or Clinton. “None of the above” effectively wins every presidential election, and it isn’t even close.

That is a pretty damning indictment of our political system and suggests that understanding non-voters is more important than a Joe Biden speech watched by less than 10% of adults, and far more important than what a bunch of DC insiders think of it.

20. Chris Crawford: Five Nonpartisan Ways Religious Leaders Can Support the 2020 Election

21. Catholic World Report: A drowning man prayed for help. God sent a floating tiki bar filled with priests.

22. Jonathan Van Maren: C.S. And His Stepsons

After Jack’s death, Douglas went to live with journalist Jean Wakeman. (J.R.R. Tolkien, whom he’d met at the Inklings meetings Lewis often took him to as a boy, also offered to take him in if he needed a place to stay.) Warnie, grieving for Joy and his brother, finally succumbed to the alcoholism he had fought so long to defeat. Gresham says that after Jack’s death he never saw Warnie sober again. David struck off on his own, and his mental illness plagued him for his entire life.

“Nobody seems to know that David was ever there,” Gresham told me. “He seems to have faded out of existence. . . the biographies that I’ve encountered about Jack, for example, hardly mention my brother.” For Gresham, it’s a signal that the biographers haven’t dug deep enough. “I grew up with him, and I can tell you a great deal more than any of the biographers.” Perhaps it is time that Douglas Gresham put pen to paper and did just that.

23. Micah Meadowcroft: Some Naturally Negative Thoughts

Unless there are enormous changes, even revolutionary, the next decade will see the careers of more and more Millennials grind down to a standstill, leaving them face to face with the fact that they are alone. Rationalization will ensue; people will cope, with continued celebrations of being “child-free” or of their “chosen family,” and with more and more extreme politics. Carlson is right; people should set fire to, blow up, a political system that stands in the way of marriage and children.

24. Stuck in Italy: Washington priest trusts in God as he waits to begin U.S. ministry

Izquierdo said that during his unexpected extra time in Rome he had “been thinking and praying a lot.”

“This has increased my faith in many ways. My trust in God, my hope, and also my charity. Just to think that it’s not only my situation,” he said. “I think my case, my situation, just reflects the situation many people are facing.”

25. The Babylon Bee: House That Took Five Hours To Clean Destroyed By Kids In Fourteen Seconds

The children realized the home was clean and declared they wouldn’t stand for it. “Not on our watch,” said Calvin Manning, 4. “Destroy! Destroy! Destroy!” Working with the speed of the Looney Tunes’ Tasmanian Devil, the Manning children charged through the house, doing their best to undo literally everything their mom had done for the entire day. They pillaged and plundered like a horde of Dothraki warriors, pulling toys off shelves, throwing suspicious substances on every possible surface, and pouring a bunch of half-cups of juice and leaving them all over the house.