CATHOLIC LEAGUE DENOUNCES NEO-FASCIST GEORGE SOROS ATTACK ON CHRISTIANS - BUT WHERE IS THE LEAGUE ON CHINA'S PERSECUTION OF CHRISTIANS?!?

Catholic League Denounces Soros-Funded ‘Attack on Religious Liberty’

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Josh Applegate via Unsplash

THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, PH.D.

6 May 2020249

3:28

Catholic League president Bill Donohue has decried a coordinated left-wing attack on the project of the U.S. Commission on Unalienable Rights in an attempt to downgrade religious freedom and elevate LGBT and “reproductive” rights.

Dozens of international left-wing organizations “recently signed a statement lecturing the U.S. State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights,” Dr. Donohue noted, including “the Center for Reproductive Rights, Human Rights Watch, and the International Women’s Health Coalition.”

“Their opposition to religious liberty was on grand display,” Donohue said. “In their world, every time religious liberty clashes with abortion rights or the LGBT agenda, the former must bow to the latter.”

Last summer, Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo announced the formation of a Commission on Unalienable Rights to provide advice on human rights “grounded in our nation’s founding principles and the principles of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

One of the key “unalienable” rights is religious freedom, enshrined in the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which guarantees the “free exercise” of religion while prohibiting the establishment of a national religion.

The letter addressed to the Commission on Unalienable Rights says, “we urge the Commission to reject the prioritization of freedom of religion as a cloak to permit violations of the human rights of women, girls, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.”

“The hostility to religious liberty could not be more evident,” Donohue observes. “In their formulation, religious liberty is not a foundational right. No, it is a ‘cloak’ designed to rob people of their newly discovered rights.”

Religious liberty “has long been recognized throughout the world as a foundational right,” Donohue states, and thus it “should never be put on the same moral or legal plane with reproductive or sexual rights” because to do so would “devalue” it.

“This, of course, is exactly what these organizations seek to do,” he notes.

Early on, the letter alleges that a right to abortion is “essential to the realization of fundamental human rights,” including the right to life.

“These sages obviously don’t see the irony in mentioning the right to life in a statement that rejects it,” Donohue observes.

Many of the most prominent organizations attacking religious liberty have a history of bashing religion, especially Catholicism, Donohue notes, beginning with the three organizers.

The George Soros-funded Center for Reproductive Rights has repeatedly attacked the Catholic Church with “venom,” Donohue states, labeling the Holy See “an obstacle to women’s reproductive rights.”

The Soros-funded Human Rights Watch also labels the Holy See as “obstructionist” for standing up for the rights of the unborn, Donohue states.

The International Women’s Health Coalition has opposed the Commission on Unalienable Rights from the outset, alleging that the concept of natural rights and natural law “is rooted in 13th century theology and used anti-rights actors to attack women’s and LGBTQI rights.”

In other words, “these left-wing organizations have long harbored an animus against the Catholic Church,” Donohue declares, and many would have folded were it not for “its atheist-billionaire benefactor, George Soros.”

China Orders Christian Church to Discontinue Online Worship

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THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, PH.D.

5 May 2020576

3:27

The Chinese communist party has ordered the Early Rain Covenant Church (ERCC) to cease all online worship services, in its latest crackdown on Christianity in the country.

In late 2018, Chinese authorities carried out a series of tightly coordinated raids on the 5,000-member Early Rain Covenant Church in the city of Chengdu, arresting more than 100 members, including Pastor Wang Yi and his wife.

The government cut the phone line to the church and Chinese police reportedly tracked down church members using the location signals from their mobile phones. Pastor Wang later received a sentence of nine years in prison for “inciting subversion” and running an illegal “business.”

China’s state-run Global Times newspaper argued at the time that Wang was not a true Christian but an agitator “brainwashed by Western values.”

Since the shuttering of their church, Early Rain members have had to resort to online streamed worship services, but now the government wants to stop those as well, the Christian Post reported Monday.

Last weekend, police brought in members of ERCC in charge of church activities and online services and demanded that they bring a halt to all activities. One of those detained was Ran Yunfei, who had been scheduled to give a testimony during a church service. Police allowed him to return home only after the service had ended.

As Breitbart News reported, on Easter Sunday, police from the Public Security Bureau raided the homes of ERCC members, arresting six church leaders for participating in an online worship service via Zoom.

“At that time I was also in the Zoom call, but there was a long period of time where I did not hear a thing,” one church member said. “I thought it’s the network connection issue at first, but I soon heard a quarrel erupt. Our co-worker Wang Jun was questioning some people, ‘Who are you to do this [to us]?’”

The Easter service included a taped sermon given by imprisoned Pastor Wang, which apparently sparked the raids. One church member, Zhang Jiangqing, said that police came to his house and threatened harsh treatment if he continues to listen to Wang’s sermons.

“Don’t participate in already banned [religious] activities anymore! Don’t listen to Pastor [Wang]’s sermons anymore! If you do this again, we will deal with it seriously and take you away!” Zhang said.

In its 2020 report released last week, the U.S. Commission for International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) said that religious freedom conditions in China “continued to deteriorate” in 2019.

“The Chinese government has created a high-tech surveillance state, utilizing facial recognition and artificial intelligence to monitor religious minorities,” it noted.

Commissioner Johnnie Moore said there was no doubt that China is “the world’s foremost violator of human rights and religious freedom.”

“It cannot be compared to any other country in the world not only because of its inexcusable actions, but because of the way it aids and abets similar actions by other countries all around the world,” Moore said.

USCIRF recommended that the U.S. government “intensify efforts to counter Chinese government influence operations in the United States that are designed to suppress information about or advocacy in response to violations of religious freedom in China.”