View of the Vatican City Gardens by Patrik Kunec (CC BY-SA 4.0). My earlier column reviewed Washington’s recently passed Senate Bill 5375 that would have required Roman Catholic priests to violate their sacred duty to maintain the seal of confession by reporting those who committed the heinous act of child abuse to state authorities. Based…
Saint Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City via Wikimedia Commons (CC0-01). Washington’s controversial Senate Bill 5375, “An ACT Relating to the duty of clergy to report child abuse and neglect,” scheduled to go into effect on July 27, 2025, removes the legal protection for Roman Catholic priests under the seal of confession when dealing with mandatory sexual…
Australian House of Representatives by JJ Harrison (CC BY-SA 3.0). The constitutional protections for religious freedom and against the establishment of state religions in the United States and Australia bear a striking similarity. Under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, approved as part of the Bill of Rights in 1791, “Congress shall make…
St. Isidore of Seville (1655) depicted by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo (CC0). Introduction As I discussed previously, a controversy arose on June 5, 2023, when Oklahoma’s Statewide Virtual Charter School Board authorized the creation of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School. Named after the patron saint of the internet, and intended to operate under the leadership of…
Oklahoma City’s Skyline by Oklahoma City Convention and Visitors Bureau (CC BY-SA 3.0). The school choice movement spurred on by Milton Friedman’s highly influential 1955 essay, The Role of Government in Education, affords parents greater opportunities to select where their children can be educated. A key component in this movement are charter schools. Charter schools…
“First Female Muslim Chaplain, 2021” by Airman 1st Class Jackson Manske (CC0). Senator John Boozman (R-AR) and Senator Raphael Warnock (D-GA) recently sponsored the Chaplains Memorial Preservation Act, authorizing the National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces to update the Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish chaplains’ memorials at Arlington National Cemetery to recognize those who died…
“Library” from Pixabay (License) After its recent attempts to challenge conscience exemptions for medical professionals whose faiths prevent them from participating in procedures such as abortion or gender reassignment surgery, the Biden administration has continued its assault on religious freedom. This time the administration and the Federal Department of Education (DOE) are placing the status…
One of the more contentious issues surrounding medical care concerns the conscience rights of health care professionals such as doctors, physician assistants, nurses, and the faith-based institutions in which they work. Controversy arises when individuals and/or their institutional policies refuse to comply with federal rules mandating that they violate their sincerely held religious beliefs, which…
Approaching Vatican City, Rome by Fenous (CC BY-SA 4.0). Speaking in the Vatican to a gathering of the Italian General Confederation of Labor on December 19, 2022, Pope Francis eloquently proclaimed “there are no free workers without unions.” Francis affirmed the long-standing labor teachings of the Roman Catholic Church, which began in 1891 with Pope…
This article is part of our “Clothed in Religion: Law and Religious Attire/Garb” series.If you’d like to check out other articles in this series, click here. Introduction In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Polonius famously muses that “the apparel oft proclaims the man.” Yet, in today’s increasingly religiously diverse (and religiously unaffiliated) American society wherein about 30% are religiously…