St. Mary's Church

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 4, 2025 / 14:37 pm (CNA).

First Liberty Institute and Heather Gebelin Hacker of Hacker Stephens LLP have filed an amicus brief on behalf of 46 United States lawmakers urging the federal court to allow the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public schools.

U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana; Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas; and Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn, R-Texas, are among the lawmakers supporting the cause after federal judges blocked Texas and Louisiana laws requiring the display of the commandments.

“The Ten Commandments — adorned both inside and outside the U.S. Supreme Court — served as essential building blocks for Western civilization and are deeply embedded in the history of this country,” Johnson said in a Dec 4. statement.

“I am grateful to my colleagues for joining me in filing this amicus brief, and we hope the court follows well-established precedent and affirms the importance of teaching the fundamental foundations of our country,” he said.

In 2024, the state of Louisiana adopted House Bill 71, which requires schools that receive public funding to display the Ten Commandments, but a federal judge subsequently blocked the law for being “coercive” and “unconstitutional.” Then in May of this year, Texas passed Senate Bill 10 that also requires the commandments be placed in classrooms. In August, a federal judge also partially blocked that state from enforcing its law. 

The cases were consolidated and are slated to be heard this month by the full panel of judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

First Liberty Institute, a legal organization dedicated to defending religious liberty in the U.S., reported that previous religious freedom cases including The American Legion v. American Humanist Association and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District “make clear that displaying the Ten Commandments in public schools is constitutional.”

“As the Supreme Court has repeatedly acknowledged, the Ten Commandments were foundational to Western legal tradition, including the common-law system that shaped American law, and this case is critical to reaffirming our commitment to the principles that have guided America since our founding,” Cruz said. “I hope the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals will uphold the ruling.”

“I’m proud to stand with Sen. Cruz in supporting Texas’ law mandating the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools across the Lone Star State,” Cornyn said. “The Ten Commandments ensure students are reminded of the Judeo-Christian values that have shaped our state and nation.”

“America was founded as a nation grounded in a distinctly Christian understanding, and the Ten Commandments are intertwined with America’s legal, moral, and historical heritage,” Roy said. Placing them “in every classroom in Texas affirms that we are a Judeo-Christian nation, upholding our historical and moral heritage and proclaiming the Ten Commandments as a guiding path for a righteous way of life.”

“Our religious heritage and the best of the nation’s history and traditions acknowledge the Ten Commandments as an important symbol of law and moral conduct with both religious and secular significance,” said Kelly Shackelford, president, CEO, and chief counsel for First Liberty. “Government hostility to religion and our religious history is not the law.”

In the brief, Hacker said: “As Justice [Neil] Gorsuch warned in American Legion, if individuals ‘could invoke the authority of a federal court to forbid what they dislike for no more reason than they dislike it … courts would start to look more like legislatures, responding to social pressures rather than remedying concrete harms, in the process supplanting the right of the people and their elected representatives to govern themselves.’”

CNA Staff, Dec 4, 2025 / 14:07 pm (CNA).

Buffalo, New York, Bishop Michael Fisher is permitting Catholics to meet at diocesan parishes while they work to oppose diocesan-mandated parish closures, with the bishop reversing an earlier policy after talks with the Vatican.

Fisher had banned such parishioner meetings in October 2024 amid opposition to the Buffalo Diocese’s “Road to Renewal” plan that included multiple parish closures and mergers. That initiative was finalized in September 2024.

On Nov. 27 the advocacy group Save Our Buffalo Churches posted a Nov. 6 letter from Fisher in which he wrote that he was repealing the directive “in an effort to better protect the rights of the faithful.”

The prelate met with members of the Dicastery for the Clergy — including prefect Cardinal Lazzaro You Heung-sik — during a trip to the Vatican in October, he wrote in the letter.

“Based on our conversation, it is clear to me now that this policy is too restrictive of the rights of the faithful,” the bishop said in his letter.

He pointed to the Catholic Code of Canon Law, which holds that Christians “can legitimately vindicate and defend the rights which they possess in the Church in the competent ecclesiastical forum according to the norm of law.”

In announcing the rule change, Fisher ordered that parish funds are not to be used “for expenses related to recourse” and that Church property can only be used with permission of the facility’s pastor or administrator.

Parish-owned social media accounts and websites are also not to be used for recourse activities, he said.

The prelate stressed the need for “pastoral unity” amid the ongoing restructuring plan.

“Even if one of the faithful chooses to exercise his/her right to recourse, this choice should always be seen as a disagreement about a particular decision, not a rejection of Church authority or the Road to Renewal more broadly,” he said.

In releasing the letter, Save Our Buffalo Churches described the decision as of “crucial importance to the faithful,” though it criticized what it said was a “lack of publicity” from the diocese on the decision, with the order allegedly being left up to pastors to disseminate.

“This is insufficient, because it’s proven to be inequitable,” the group said. “It’s also in the greatest contrast with how the original October policy was promulgated: immediately and aggressively.”

The group described its decision to publish the letter as “just and equitable,” though group members said they were “thankful” for Fisher’s statement “and the wisdom contained therein.”

Parish advocates have been clashing with the bishop over the closure and merger plan for over a year. Earlier in 2025 the dispute even reached the New York Supreme Court, which in July issued a halt on parish payments into the diocese’s abuse settlement fund amid parishioner objections. 

The high court in September ultimately allowed the payments to proceed, citing a long-standing prohibition against “court involvement in the governance and administration of a hierarchical church.”

Con la presencia del Obispo de San Nicolás, Mons. Hugo Santiago, se inauguró este miércoles en la ciudad bonaerense de Salto (Argentina), la Plaza Papa Francisco, un homenaje al pontífice argentino que busca ser “el patio de la Casa Común”. 

Si Dios es bueno, ¿por qué existe el mal? fue la pregunta con la que una multitud de jóvenes desafío a Mons. José Ignacio Munilla, Obispo de Orihuela-Alicante (España), quien respondió ofreciendo cuatro claves para entender esta realidad.

El Ejército de Liberación Nacional (ELN) liberó a 28 personas que tenía secuestradas en la región del Catatumbo. Ellas fueron entregadas a una comisión humanitaria integrada por la Iglesia Católica, la ONU y la Defensoría del Pueblo. 

La cantante Rosalía, que acaba de estrenar su disco “Lux”, y la película “Los domingos”, están entre los agraciados con los Premios ¡Bravo! de la Conferencia Episcopal Española. 

CNA Staff, Dec 4, 2025 / 12:07 pm (CNA).

U.S. Military Services Archbishop Timothy Broglio is urging the country’s leaders to refrain from killing noncombatants while neutralizing violent drug cartels across the world.

The Trump administration throughout late 2025 has been launching aggressive strikes against suspected drug cartel operators in the Caribbean and the Pacific Ocean. The White House has come under fire for what critics have claimed are indiscriminate and possibly extralegal airstrikes against alleged narco boats.

Human rights advocates have particularly criticized a Sept. 2 strike on an alleged drug smuggling boat in which the military fired a second strike against two individuals who survived the initial strike.

In a Dec. 3 statement, Broglio acknowledged that “dismantling the powerful criminal networks responsible for the flow of illegal substances into our nation is a necessary and laudable task.”

Yet “questions have been raised about the use of military force in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean and, as a nation, we must ensure that the use of military force is ethical and legal,” the prelate said. 

Broglio noted that methods to eradicate drugs and drug smugglers from the U.S. must be “moral” and in line with “just war theory,” which includes respect for “the dignity of each human person.” 

“No one can ever be ordered to commit an immoral act, and even those suspected of committing a crime are entitled to due process under the law,” he said. 

The intentional killing of noncombatants is forbidden in a just war, he said, and it would be “an illegal and immoral order to [deliberately] kill survivors on a vessel who pose no immediate lethal threat to our armed forces.”

Military forces possess a legitimate means of ensuring that noncombatants are not killed, Broglio pointed out: Vessels can be intercepted, boarded, and members of the Coast Guard can arrest suspected drug runners, after which they would be subject to due process in a court. 

“True justice is achieved through transparent legal procedures, accountability, and respect for life — not through violence outside the law,” the archbishop said. 

Broglio — who previously served as president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and has led the Archdiocese for the Military Services, USA, since 2008 — pointed out that the U.S. has “a long tradition of responding to injustice, liberating the oppressed, and leading the free world.” 

Leaders “cannot tarnish that reputation with questionable actions that fail to respect the dignity of the human person and the rule of law,” he said. 

Broglio urged leaders to refrain from asking soldiers to “engage in immoral actions.” He further noted that his own investment in the matter stems from a tradition as old as the the country itself. 

“[F]rom the beginning,” he said, “George Washington wanted chaplains with his troops to tell him the truth.”

Obras Misionales Pontificias en España lanza “Arde”, un sitio web con un mapa digital de experiencias de misión que la Iglesia ofrece para jóvenes en el país.  

La plataforma de streaming Famiplay estrenará este viernes 5 de diciembre el documental Honor in Armor: dentro de la Guardia Suiza Vaticana, una producción internacional sobre la historia, la vida cotidiana y las “misiones secretas” del pequeño ejército que protege al Papa desde hace más de cinco siglos.

Este jueves el Papa León XIV recibió en audiencia en el Vaticano a Peter Pellegrini, Presidente de la República Eslovaca desde junio de 2024, y al presidente de Mongolia, Ukhnaagiin Khürelsükh.