People say they’re leaving religion due to anti-LGBTQ teachings and sexual abuse

— The PRRI poll found that the vast majority of those who are unaffiliated are content to stay that way. Just 9% of respondents say they’re looking for a religion that would be right for them.

Symbols of the three monotheistic religions

By Jason DeRose

People in the U.S. are leaving and switching faith traditions in large numbers. The idea of “religious churning” is very common in America, according to a new survey from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI).

It finds that around one-quarter (26%) of Americans now identify as religiously unaffiliated, a number that has risen over the last decade and is now the largest single religious group in the U.S. That’s similar to what other surveys and polls have also found, including Pew Research.

PRRI found that the number of those who describe themselves as “nothing in particular” has held steady since 2013, but those who identify as atheists have doubled (from 2% to 4%) and those who say they’re agnostic has more than doubled (from 2% to 5%).

This study looks at which faith traditions those unaffiliated people are coming from.

“Thirty-five percent were former Catholics, 35% were former mainline Protestants, only about 16% were former evangelicals,” says Melissa Deckman, PRRI’s chief executive officer. “And really not many of those Americans are, in fact, looking for an organized religion that would be right for them. We just found it was 9%.”

That these people are not looking for a religion has, Deckman says, implications for how and even whether houses of worship should try to attract new people.

Among other findings: The Catholic Church is losing more members than it’s gaining, though the numbers are slightly better for retention among Hispanic Catholics.

There is much lower religious churn among Black Protestants and among Jews who seem overall happy in their faith traditions and tend to stay there.

As for why people leave their religions, PRRI found that about two-thirds (67%) of people who leave a faith tradition say they did so because they simply stopped believing in that religion’s teachings.

And nearly half (47%) of respondents who left cited negative teaching about the treatment of LGBTQ people.

Those numbers were especially high with one group in particular.

“Religion’s negative teaching about LGBTQ people are driving younger Americans to leave church,” Deckman says. “We found that about 60% of Americans who are under the age of 30 who have left religion say they left because of their religious traditions teaching, which is a much higher rate than for older Americans.”

Hispanic Americans are also more likely to say they’ve left a religion over LGBTQ issues. Other reasons cited for leaving: clergy sexual abuse and over-involvement in politics.

The new PRRI report is based on a survey of more than 5,600 adults late last year.

About one-third of religiously unaffiliated Americans say they no longer identify with their childhood religion because the religion was bad for their mental health. That response was strongest among LGBTQ respondents.

The survey also asked about the prevalence of the so-called “prosperity Gospel.” It found that 31% of respondents agreed with the statement “God always rewards those who have good faith with good health, financial success, and fulfilling personal relationships.”

Black Americans tend to agree more with these theological beliefs than other racial or ethnic groups. And Republicans are more likely than independents and Democrats to hold such beliefs.

Complete Article HERE!

Dismay as Louisiana lookback law for child sexual abuse victims struck down

— Court rules 4-3 to overturn law that had allowed victims to file civil suits over sexual abuse that took place decades ago

By David Hammer

In a split ruling that has major implications for hundreds of child sexual abuse victims, the Louisiana state supreme court has struck down a law that had allowed victims to file civil lawsuits over molestation that happened decades ago.

Child molestation victims and their advocates were devastated by the 4-3 ruling from a court whose members are elected.

Lawyers Richard Trahant, Soren Giselson and John Denenea, who represented the plaintiffs in the case at the center of Friday’s ruling, said: “Today, four of the seven … justices overruled a law passed by a unanimous Louisiana legislature, signed by then governor [John Bel] Edwards, supported by then attorney general and current governor Jeff Landry and current attorney general Liz Murrill. That’s nearly 200 elected officials who viewed this law as being constitutional.

“Four elected officials just obliterated that. They cannot fathom the excruciating pain this decision has heaped upon adults who were raped as children and already suffer a life sentence.”

Richard Windmann, president of Survivors of Childhood Sex Abuse, said: “Once more the victims and survivors of childhood sex abuse have been denied justice. The institutionalized, systematic and wholesale rape of our children by these organizations is self-evident.”

Windmann pledged to take the case to the US supreme court if necessary, calling it “the final stop to see if we, as human beings, are going to let these atrocities stand and continue to happen”.

Kathryn Robb of ChildUSA, an advocacy group that helped pass lookback or revival windows across the country, said Friday’s ruling meant “predators and institutions that protect predators are going to continue with their bad practices”.

“They’re going to continue with their coverup,” Robb said. “They’re going to continue with putting children in harm’s way. And so I’m saddened. I’m saddened by this decision.”

Such laws were upheld as constitutional in 24 states and the District of Columbia. Louisiana now joins Utah as the only states to find them unconstitutional, Robb said.

Louisiana’s supreme court heard arguments in January involving cases filed against the Roman Catholic diocese of Lafayette over allegations that a priest in that region – about 135 miles (217km) west of New Orleans – molested several children between 1971 and 1979.

The lawsuits were filed under a “lookback window” law the Louisiana legislature passed unanimously in 2021, which eliminated deadlines for old claims in recognition of scientific research that found the average victim doesn’t come forward until that person is 52 years old.

Four Louisiana supreme court justices – James Genovese, Scott Crichton, Jeff Hughes and Piper Griffin – concurred that the “lookback window” law is unconstitutional. The majority opinion written by Genovese said reviving old sexual abuse claims violated the due-process rights of alleged abusers and their enablers to no longer be sued for damages once the original deadline to do so had passed.

The deadlines for filing such lawsuits have changed over the years. In the 1960s and 70s, victims – even children – had a single year to come forward. Those deadlines were extended in the 1980s and 90s to allow child victims to file suit well beyond their 18th birthdays. In 2021, such deadlines were eliminated entirely.

Several justices said from the bench that, regardless of how horrendous the harm caused by child molestation, applying the law retroactively raised constitutional concerns. But in his dissent Friday, Justice William Crain said Louisiana lawmakers should retain the power to give that right to victims.

“Absent a constitutional violation, which defendants have not established, the forum for this debate is the legislature, not this court,” Crain wrote. “The legislature had that debate and – without a single dissenting vote – abolished the procedural bar and restored plaintiffs’ right to sue.”

Crain was joined in dissent by colleagues Jay McCallum and John Weimer, the court’s chief justice.

Friday’s ruling does not affect measures eliminating deadlines to demand civil damages in cases of child sexual abuse that occurred after the law was enacted in 2021.

The lookback window struck from the books Friday was not exclusively for clergy abuse claimants. But it prompted many new cases of that nature against Louisiana’s Catholic institutions and clerics who worked for them.

Among the organizations standing to gain most from Friday’s ruling is the archdiocese of New Orleans, which declared bankruptcy in 2020 in an attempt to dispense with a mound of litigation related to a decades-old clerical molestation scandal there. The lookback window was the strongest legal weapon that clergy abuse accusers seeking damages from the archdiocese had in their efforts to drive the value of their claims up.

With the lookback window no longer a factor, the archdiocese’s efforts to settle those claims for as cheaply as possible received a significant boost.

“The organizations that enable and protect child molesters are rejoicing over this ruling,” said attorney Kristi Schubert, who represents a number of clerical abuse claimants caught up in the New Orleans archdiocese’s bankruptcy. “The ruling shields wrongdoers from the consequences of their evil actions.”

Some supporters of Catholic clergy abuse victims expressed concern that the Louisiana supreme court would ultimately rule against them after its justices prayed with New Orleans archbishop Gregory Aymond at a service in October at St Louis Cathedral. Organizers said the service’s purpose was for members of Louisiana’s legal profession to join Aymond – the leader of the state’s conference of Catholic bishops – in praying for the healing of clerical molestation victims.

Neither the archdiocese of New Orleans nor the diocese of Lafayette immediately commented on Friday’s court decision when asked.

Complete Article HERE!

Former deacon, whose son was abused by priest, excommunicated by Diocese of Lafayette


Scott Peyton, a former deacon whose son was molested by a priest he served alongside in St. Landry Parish, has been excommunicated by Lafayette Bishop J. Douglas Deshotel.

By Jim Hummel

Scott Peyton, a former deacon whose son was molested by a priest he served alongside in St. Landry Parish, has been excommunicated by Lafayette Bishop J. Douglas Deshotel.

Peyton served as a deacon in the diocese until December 2023. That’s when he resigned citing “distressing revelations regarding sexual abuse scandals involving members of the clergy.”

“The magnitude of these revelations has deeply shaken my faith and trust in the institution to which I have dedicated a significant portion of my life,” Peyton wrote in his resignation letter to Bishop Deshotel. “This decision is not a rejection of my faith in God or my commitment to living a life guided by Christian principles. Instead, it reflects a conscientious objection to the way the Church has handled cases of sexual abuse, and a desire to distance myself from an institution that, currently, falls short of the values it professes.”

In 2019, Father Michael Guidry was sentenced to seven years in prison after pleading guilty to molesting Peyton’s teenage son. Peyton and Guidry served together at St. Peter’s Church in Morrow. The family settled a civil lawsuit against the diocese in 2021.

Bishop Deshotel wrote to Peyton following his resignation.

“I was sad to receive your email deciding to leave the Church and cease to exercise your vocation as Deacon,” wrote Bishop Deshotel in an email provided by Peyton to News 15. “I will remember you in my prayers and masses that you be open to the gift of faith in the Catholic Church founded by Jesus Christ and built on the Apostles. Sacramentally you are a Deacon though you choose not to exercise your ministry.”

But this week, months after he resigned, Peyton received a decree from Bishop Deshotel stating that he had been excommunicated from the church.

Bishop J. Douglas Deshotel

In the letter to Peyton, Bishop Deshotel wrote:

“A bishop never wishes to communicate a censure to anyone. I am aware that your family has suffered a trauma but the answer does not lie in leaving the Most Holy Eucharist: We are not Catholics because the Church on earth is perfect but because the Lord has entrusted us to a mystery greater than ourselves, which He established as the means to our salvation. The censures of the Church are intended to be medicinal, perhaps as much for those who impose them as for those who are subject to them. It is with this objective that I mournfully must declare them.”

Peyton worries his excommunication sends a harmful message to survivors of clergy sex abuse, especially given there is no indication his son’s abuser has been excommunicated.

“If molesting a child is not grave enough to get excommunicated, but telling the bishop that I don’t agree with how he’s running the diocese and how the church is handling the sex abuse crisis, if that’s a grave sin, then I guess I’ll wear the badge of excommunication as an honor. I think the hypocrisy in this excommunication speaks volumes of the leadership of Bishop Deshotel. I think he should resign his leadership and those that are running this diocese behind the scenes should step down along with him,” explained Peyton.

Complete Article HERE!

The End of Church Militant

By Hank Kennedy

We fighters for LGBTQ rights have to take our victories where we can get them. As state governments continue to try to take our rights away, as right-wing bigots fulminate about eliminating us from public life, as we reel in horror from the death of Nex Benedict, it’s nice to get some good news. What kind of good news? How about an anti-LGBT hate group shutting down?

In April, the Southern Poverty Law Center-designated anti-LGBT hate group Church Militant is closing its doors and shutting down its website. The group had its headquarters on Hilton Street, incongruously in Detroit’s premiere Gayborhood of Ferndale. The brainchild behind Church Militant was former broadcaster Michael Voris. Voris was incensed by what he viewed as inaccuracies about Catholicism presented in the book and film the DaVinci Code. He sought to clear up misconceptions about Catholicism through the website RealCatholictv.com, later renamed Church Militant.

It appears that clearing up misconceptions about Catholicism was really a front for Voris’s true goal, spreading hatred and intolerance. Church Militant insinuated that more liberal Catholics were gay in an attempt to force them out of the church. They called composer of Catholic hymns Dan Schuette an “active homosexual,” and garnered even more publicity by calling the Archbishop of Washington D.C, a Black man, a “Marxist” and an “African Queen.” These racist and homophobic slurs were too much for the Detroit Catholic archdiocese, who wrote an official rebuke of the organization.

This rebuke did not lead to a moderation of Church Militant’s message. They promoted Holocaust denier and Trump-dinner guest Nicholas Fuentes and hosted a fawning interview with conspiracy theorist and self-proclaimed Christian nationalist Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Within Ferndale, they attempted to get their neighbors on city council to fly their flag but wisely, the city decided against flying the flag of a hate group. In an episode that showed the group’s influence, Donald Trump’s head of the Federal Elections Commission, James E. Trainor, gave an interview to Church Militant. In his interview, Trainor called the separation of church and state “a fallacy” and declared that the 2020 presidential election was “a spiritual war.”

As to what else Church Militant did to earn their hate group designation, for one they endorsed the discredited and harmful practice of conversion therapy. They ran homophobic headlines like “Episcopal Sodomy: Exposing the Enablers” and “The Gay Rainbow is the Mark of the Beast.” They targeted a LGBTQ owned bakery by asking them to bake a cake with a homophobic message.

I only encountered Church Militant once, during a counter-protest in Royal Oak. They were there, along with the 11th District Republican Committee led by fellow bigot Shane Trejo, to protest a Drag Queen Story Time event at Sidetrack Books. Happily they were vastly outnumbered. An estimated two dozen protested the event but there were 1,000 joyful counter protesters. Church Militant and friends could not halt the event and had to slink away in defeat. No children were harmed by the storytime or by any bigots.

An obvious influence on the group was notorious historical resident of Metro Detroit: The Anti-Semitic “Radio Priest” Father Charles Coughlin, who broadcast in Royal Oak. Like Church Militant, Coughlin spewed hate against minority groups and theorized that foreigners and Communists were secretly controlling the United States. Coughlin’s hated minority was Jews, for Church Militant it was LGBTQ people. Also like Church Militant, Coughlin used modern media to spread his message. In the 1930s that was radio; today it is the internet. Church Militant seemed aware of the connection given that they posted an article to their website recommending Coughlin to members as a fighter against Communism and the welfare state. For obvious reasons, they avoided the swastika-covered elephant in the room of Coughlin’s Nazi sympathies.

A few months ago, Vorhis stepped down. He had admitted in a 2017 Atlantic documentary that he had “live-in relationships with homosexual men”, but that he was now no longer gay. Apparently that change did not take since he had been sending out shirtless selfies to male staffers at Church Militant, surely embarrassing behavior for such a virulently anti-LGBTQ organization. After that misfortune, the group was sued for defamation by Reverend Georges de Laire due to Church Militant publishing an article calling him unstable and vindictive. The costs of the lawsuit settlement are so great that Church Militant will have to shut down in April. When I mentioned at a vigil for Nex Benedict in Ferndale that Church Militant would no longer be in operation, there were cheers and applause.

While I may fantasize that Church Militant were driven out a pitchfork and torch-wielding mob out of a Gothic horror story, I’m glad to see them gone, regardless of what eventually shut them down. They are down for the count, regardless of who delivered the knockout blow. But, we must be ever vigilant and ready to mobilize against any groups that may try to take the place of that dark satanic mill of propaganda.

Complete Article HERE!

Pope meets with child protection board as events outside Vatican show abuse scandal isn’t going away

By Nicole Winfield

Pope Francis sought to encourage his child protection board on Thursday to continue helping victims, as new developments outside the Vatican underscored that the Catholic Church’s clergy sex abuse scandal isn’t going away anytime soon.

Francis met with his Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, which is expected to soon release the first-ever audit of safeguarding procedures and policies church-wide.

But as that report is being compiled, church officials in Switzerland reported a surge in victims coming forward since the September publication of a bombshell report that found over 1,000 cases of abuse since the mid-20th century in a country with a relatively small Catholic population.

The diocese in northwestern Basel, for example, reported that more than half of the suspected 183 cases in the last 13 years emerged in the last six months. Swiss news agency SDA-Keystone reported at least 70 other cases across four other dioceses since the report was issued.

Closer to home, a criminal court in Sicily handed down an important verdict this week against a priest whom the Vatican apparently exonerated on a technicality even after one of his victims wrote to Francis, begging for him to intervene.

The case was being closely watched since Italy’s Catholic hierarchy has only recently and reluctantly begun confronting its legacy of abuse in a country where the issue is still somewhat taboo.

The verdict by the tribunal in Enna sentenced the priest, the Rev. Giuseppe Rugolo, to four and a half years in prison for attempted sexual violence and violence-related charges against three minors. The court also held his diocese, Piazza Armerina, Sicily, responsible for paying civil damages and legal fees, according to the sentence on Tuesday.

Piazza Armeria Bishop Rosario Gisana was caught on intercepted wiretaps confessing to having covered up for the priest. But a lawyer for the diocese, Gabriele Cantaro, stressed in a statement Thursday that the liability didn’t stem from the actions of Gisana or his predecessor, but merely from the diocese’s general responsibility for the actions of its priests.

According to the newspaper Domani, which covered the case closely, the Vatican’s sex abuse office shelved the case on technical grounds because Rugolo was only a seminarian when the abuse occurred. The Vatican’s in-house norms at the time only called for canonical sanctions against priests who abused minors, not seminarians.

Il Messaggero newspaper reported in 2021 that one of Rugolo’s victims wrote to Francis directly, begging him to intervene after he and his parents had spent years trying to get the church to take action against Rugolo, who was sent to a diocese in northern Italy after the accusations were raised.

Amid Italian media coverage of the case, Francis on Nov. 6 heartily praised Gisana when the bishop led a group of pilgrims to the Vatican.

“This bishop is great. He was persecuted, calumnied but he’s been firm, always correct, a correct man,” Francis said in remarks that outraged victims’ advocates.

Francis told his child protection advisers on Thursday that listening to victims was crucial to helping them heal.

“In our ecclesial ministry of protecting minors, closeness to victims of abuse is no abstract concept, but a very concrete reality, comprised of listening, intervening, preventing and assisting,” he said in remarks read by an aide as Francis continues to recover from the flu.

Complete Article HERE!