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Twenty-Five Things That Caught My Eye Today: Nigerian Christians Kidnapped, the Cruelty of the Commodification of Babies & More

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Christian worshippers leave St. Gabriel Catholic church in Abuja, Nigeria, in 2020.
Christian worshippers leave St. Gabriel Catholic church in Abuja, Nigeria, in 2020. (Afolabi Sotunde/Reuters)

1. Catholic priest abducted after Sunday Mass in Nigeria

A Catholic priest of the Diocese of Minna in Nigeria was among 45 people kidnapped after Mass on Sunday.

The Nigeria Catholic Network reported that on the morning of March 27, assailants abducted villagers along with Father Leo Raphael Ozigi, a priest of St. Mary’s Catholic Church in the town of Sarkin Pawa.

Father Emeka Amanchukwu, the diocesan chancellor, confirmed to ACI Africa, CNA’s partner agency, that Ozigi had been kidnapped.

Amanchukwu said in a letter to the Catholic Secretariat of Nigeria that “the unfortunate incident occurred when the priest was returning to his place of residence in Christ the King Parish, Gwada, after the celebration of the Holy Mass in his parish, St. Mary’s Parish, Sarkin Pawa.”

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3. Naomi Schaefer Riley: How the pandemic slowdown in court devastated NYC kids’ lives

How bad was the pandemic for the most vulnerable children in this city? A new report on the extreme dysfunction in the city’s family court system should horrify our leaders and provoke public outrage.

According to the study done by the New York City Bar Association and The Fund for Modern Courts, thousands of families had to wait extra months, if not years, for decisions about findings of child maltreatment, visitation, adoption, domestic violence, foster care and termination of parental rights. Women with domestic violence complaints determined they couldn’t leave their abusive boyfriends because there was no court available to ask for child support. A child’s adoption took 15 months instead of three. A custodial father was prevented from seeing his two-year-old son for eight months after the mother refused to return the boy following a visit. 

As the report concludes, “At a time of crisis, when the vulnerable populations who routinely appear in Family Court needed help the most, the courthouse doors were largely closed.” Like the folks running our schools and our child welfare agencies, it seems clear that the family court system put the comfort of adults ahead of the needs of kids.

4. Charles Camosy: Attacks on religious health-care providers keep on coming

After being admitted to an Ohio intensive care unit in April of 2017, a physician named William Husel gave Hayes 1,000 micrograms of fentanyl, a synthetic opiate that is lethal in even small doses. The dose Hayes got, said Dr. Wesley Ely, an expert witness in Husel’s trial last month, was enough “to take out an elephant.”

Husel stands accused of hastening the death of 14 people, including Hayes. Ely described the amount Husel was prescribing as “astounding” and “mind-boggling” and likened it to “driving 250 mph through a school zone while people are crossing the street.”

There’s nothing in the medical literature that addresses this kind of practice. “There’s no literature at all,” Ely testified, “because nobody does that.”

Patients like Ryan Hayes may come into Husel’s care very sick, but their illness isn’t what killed them. Husel killed them, Ely testified.

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When the lawyer for the defense got the chance to cross-examine Ely, she didn’t go over his claims about the science and medicine. Instead, she went after his Catholicism.

She accused him essentially of being a publicly religious health care provider as if this were disqualifying in itself. She pointed out that — horror of horrors — he received an award from the pro-life Catholic Medical Association.

5. Federalist: How A Trial In Finland Could Have Worldwide Effects On Government Persecution Of Religion

6. Tom Farr: The Travail of International Religious Freedom, and of US Leadership

These international documents represented a substantial advancement in the idea of fundamental human rights, including religious freedom, for all. Unfortunately, while the importance of such language, including the language on religious freedom, was and remains a standard to which every nation is called, it is now clear that many, from the beginning, routinely ignored the international norms.

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9. AP: Amendment on abortion doesn’t advance in Maryland

10. Olivia Enos: Maximizing The Impact Of The Atrocity Determination For Rohingya

11. Abby Johnson: I facilitated 22,000 abortions, but God forgave me

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16. Tweet by Jay W. Richards:

17. Washington Post: More houses of worship are reopening, but attendance is flat, new survey shows

The survey of 10,441 U.S. adults taken March 7-13 showed that only 27 percent of respondents said they attended services in person this month compared with 67 percent who typically do. Back in September, when the coronavirus was still surging and hospitals were reaching capacity numbers, the percentage of those attending in-person religious services was 26 percent.

18. New York Post: Harvard study can teach NY officials the secrets of Success Academy’s … success

19. Ukrainian bishop to deliver Notre Dame’s commencement speech

“We have previously honored Archbishop Gudziak for his work as leader of the Ukrainian Catholic University as a center for cultural thought, for his Christian witness and for the formation of a Ukrainian society based on human dignity,” said Father John I. Jenkins, Notre Dame president, in announcing the honor. “We now further recognize him as he speaks forcefully and eloquently in support of the Ukrainian people and in opposition to the Russian invasion of his ancestral homeland.”

20. New York Post: Couple who asked for female embryo sues fertility clinic over baby boy

Our jaws dropped to the floor. I was convinced it had to be someone else’s result.

I looked at Robbie and said, “What’s if it’s not yours — who is in my body?!” That’s when I flipped out, that’s when I felt my body was taken hostage. I assumed it was someone else’s embryo, not the wrong embryo of ours.

It scared the s–t out of me. I don’t know how to explain this — it felt like there was an alien living inside of me.

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22. ‘Love means radical solidarity’: Walking with the Sisters of Life

23. John Stonestreet, Maria Baer: Our Christian Witness

24. Fr. Paul D. Scalia: The Father’s Gifts Without The Father

The son’s demand is an abuse of his sonship, a distortion of the freedom and privilege granted by his father. But the father allows it, which is one of the parable’s most confounding aspects. It’s an image of the radical possibility of human freedom to defy even God.

25. Let a young Catholic woman you know know about this: 

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