SYDNEY – Asia Bibi has been released from death row and prison in Pakistan and is now under heavy protective guard in a secret location with her family, reported a longtime Catholic missionary involved with negotiations in Pakistan about her case.

It is said that significant numbers of Catholics have left the Church over the clergy sexual abuse crisis and the ensuing coverup. I cannot verify this since I do not know any Catholics who have made that decision. Nor have I read any news articles which quoted people who have left the Church or which provided analysis showing the emigration of disaffected Catholics.

MANCHESTER, England – The United Kingdom's Supreme Court has upheld the right of a bakery to refuse to make a cake emblazoned with a slogan in support of same-sex marriage.

The State of Alabama has had a controversial relationship with the Ten Commandments. Not so much its teachings but its physical representation.

OTTAWA – Trinity Western University’s decision to drop its mandatory community covenant has left religious freedom advocates wondering how it will impact the future of their cause. 

WASHINGTON – A Novena for the Legal Protection of Human Life is being led by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. Catholics are being encouraged to take part ahead of the Senate confirmation hearings for Judge Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to the Supreme Court.

You could almost hear the champagne corks popping below the border when U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his resignation. 

WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump announced July 9 that his nominee for the Supreme Court is Judge Brett Kavanaugh, a federal appeals court judge in Washington and a Catholic who once clerked for retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy.

Several years ago, a friend who had immigrated from the former Soviet Union told me, “Canada is the greatest place on Earth. It is a paradise.” While I felt flattered on behalf of my country to hear those words, I also wondered what in our country made him so effusive.

Anyone looking for hope from the June 15 Supreme Court of Canada decision on Trinity Western University can find it shining in the pages of the judgment itself.

OTTAWA — The Supreme Court of Canada’s decisions on Trinity Western University’s (TWU) proposed law school have delivered a severe blow to religious freedom, say advocates.

OTTAWA – Courts have no place in deciding a religious group’s rules, the Supreme Court said in a unanimous judgment May 31.

OTTAWA – Religious freedom in Canada is facing a “watershed moment” and may be “on an abyss of a revolutionary change,” argued lawyers in a Supreme Court of Canada case involving a Christian university’s proposed law school.

The Catholic Civil Rights League has become an unlikely ally of a Jehovah’s Witness congregation in a case coming before the Supreme Court.

In the 16 months between the Supreme Court decision and the passage of federal legislation regulating medically assisted death, I was intensely involved in discussions and debates within the medical profession, among Catholic health care providers, ethicists and clergy, and with national and provincial government bodies. I was trying to mitigate the harms of the decision, particularly in the protection of the vulnerable, and in defending the right of conscientious objection for physicians and faith-based organizations.