Two pieces. Links to full articles embedded in each headline.
Massachusetts tries to keep Catholics from adopting (Official Washington Examiner editorial, Aug. 11): Massachusetts deserves a major slapdown for grotesque anti-Catholic discrimination against a couple who wanted to become foster parents.
Helped by the Becket Law legal aid group, Mike and Kitty Burke filed suit on Aug. 8 against state officials who rejected their application to be foster parents. In an exhaustive screening process, state agents gave the Burkes high marks and glowing comments, but the state turned them down because their Catholic “faith is not supportive” of the state’s promotion of transgender medical procedures. The Burkes’ beliefs on sexuality were the sole reason for the denial.
Mike Burke is an Iraq War veteran, a small-business owner, and an organist at several Catholic parishes. Kitty Burke is a former special-education caregiver, a small-business owner, and a church cantor. They are willing to take in siblings, children of any ethnicity, or special-needs children, for whom Kitty Burke’s specialist training is perfectly suited….
FBI Director fibbed (or worse) about anti-Catholic memo (official Washington Examiner editorial, Aug. 14): FBI Director Christopher Wray has forfeited all grounds for confidence in his integrity. He was caught this week in yet another falsehood, this time about an infamous memo targeting “traditionalist” Catholics, which appears to mean those who hew to orthodox doctrines and unmodernized liturgies. Wray must be made to clean up his act or clean out his office.
The memo, produced by the FBI’s Richmond field office, said the bureau should particularly monitor “traditionalist Catholic” people, such as those who prefer the Latin Mass, as potential purveyors of “violent extremis[m]” who may need to be targeted for “threat mitigation.” It assumed traditionalist Catholics are particularly prone to becoming domestic terrorists. This is false and defamatory, and the specter of law enforcement targeting a faith community raises serious First Amendment concerns.
In his July 12 testimony to the House Judiciary Committee, Wray insisted that the memo was merely “a single product by a single field office.”… Wray was flagrantly misleading Congress on both major counts. It wasn’t only the FBI’s Richmond office that targeted traditional Catholics. Instead, that office “coordinated with” the FBI’s Portland office in preparing the assessment and, worse, was in touch with the FBI’s Los Angeles office, too, which initiated an investigation into a particular Catholic society there. ….
