Respect Life Radio

Paul Larkin: Political will lacking to address fentanyl scourge

"There are problems with drugs, but fentanyl clearly can kill and will kill a very large number of people if we don't do something about it," said Paul J. Larkin, senior legal research fellow, Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, Institute for Constitutional Government, at The Heritage Foundation.

"Enforcement has to be one of the three legs of any response. We have to educate people, we have to enforce the laws and we have to treat the people who wound up being addicted," said Larkin, who recently moderated a panel, "The Fentanyl Crisis: The Mexico-Texas Connection."

Declan Leary: No conservative allies who buy babies

"What absolutely is a settled question is that something is missing in the worldview of a person who is raised without a mother," said Declan Leary, associate editor of The American Conservative. "Especially someone who is raised without a mother and told that that's the way things are supposed to be. There's a difference between the tragic circumstances where a mother dies and a child is raised by a single father in some other arrangement. But when they're raised in an unnatural arrangement and told that this is the way the world is meant to be — that this is actually good — rather than something unfortunate or accidental; obviously, that person is going to grow up viewing the world the wrong way. And we can't be afraid to say that."

Leary recently wrote an article, "No Allies Who Buy Babies," described as, "The problem of gay surrogacy reminds us that the right's alliance with anti-woke liberals cannot and should not survive."

Follow him @DeclanLeary on Twitter.

Joy Pullmann: Persecution of Christian speech in Finland a threat everywhere

Päivi Räsänen, a member of the Finnish parliament, told me "she really hopes that her case will, as it has for many people, not scare Christians or others who have strong beliefs that matter to public discussion, but will embolden them to speak the truth in love. Because if you don't use those rights, then they are more likely to be eroded and taken away," said Joy Pullmann, executive editor of The Federalist. 

Pullmann is the author of a recent article, "How A Trial In Finland Could Have Worldwide Effects On Government Persecution Of Religion," which begins, "The trial of two Finnish Christians for publicly stating mainstream religious teachings that reserve sex only for heterosexual marriage is heading towards a judgment scheduled for March 30.”

Follow her @JoyPullmann as well as @PaiviRasanen on Twitter.

Bishop Athanasius Schneider: Restoring Catholic liturgy among the ruins

“What is the Church living in the past decades since the (Vatican II) Council — in the liturgy? We have a ruin in many places...Therefore we have to restore the centrality of God, of the adoration, in the midst of the chaos. This shall give us hope that we can do this," said Bishop Athanasius Schneider, O.R.C., the auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, and author of "The Catholic Mass: Steps to Restore the Centrality of God in the Liturgy" (Sophia Institute Press).

“These bishops and priests who are against the Traditional Mass, and persecuting it, they are the new Pharisees and scribes who are forbidding the simple one, the little one — as you mention, the Traditional Mass is packed with young people — they are prohibiting them to glorify Christ in such a worthy and respectful manner as it is the Traditional Mass.”

Follow Bishop Schneider at his website, Gloria Dei, and @BishopAthanas1 on Twitter.

Kara Frederick: Big tech and big government converging to restrict freedom

Digital IDs and digital passports are the gateway to the "social credit system, in addition to the second element and that is: tech companies doing the government's bidding to effectively cut you off from digital life, and a public life, if you have the wrong opinions, especially with regard to the government," said Kara Frederick, research fellow in technology policy at The Heritage Foundation who recently published a research report, "Combating Big Tech’s Totalitarianism: A Road Map."

Frederick was previously a fellow at the Center for a New American Security and, prior to that, "helped create and lead Facebook’s Global Security Counterterrorism Analysis Program," according to her Heritage bio. Follow her @karaafrederick on Twitter.

 

Arielle Del Turco: Ukrainians rise up to fight for their country

“We're used to seeing conflicts all around the world. What we're not used to is really seeing the population — average citizens, moms, grandparents, average people — rally together and make a unified effort to say, 'No, we're not all fleeing the country,' though many are. 'We're actually going to stay, we're going to fight, we're going to pitch in.' It's not just that Russia is attacking the Ukrainian military. [Russian President Vladimir Putin] really has to fight the entire country, because the entire country is rising up to fight him," said Arielle Del Turco, assistant director of the Center for Religious Liberty at Family Research Council, who recently wrote a commentary, "Courage on Display in Ukraine." 

Follow her @arielledelturco on Twitter.

Charles Stimson: Crime rising amid ”rogue prosecutors”

"The rogue prosecutor movement operates under a misbelief that the entire criminal justice system is systemically racist. Of course it isn't. And that the only way to fix it is to fundamentally reverse engineer and destroy the existing criminal justice system. Which is hogwash," said Charles "Cully" Stimson, deputy director of the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. "You cannot find one of their policies, not one, that's pro-victim. Not one."

See Stimson's research at the Rogue Prosecutors web page and follow him @CullyStimson on Twitter. 

Fr. Blake Britton: Reclaim Vatican II for renewal of the Church

“What most people assume is Vatican II is actually not Vatican II. It's this paracouncil, this false narrative constructed by these different theologians and thinkers, as opposed to the actual documentation itself," said Fr. Blake Britton, a priest in the Diocese of Orlando, a contributor to Word on Fire and author of "Reclaiming Vatican II: What It (Really) Said, What It Means, and How It Calls Us to Renew the Church" (Ave Maria Press / Word on Fire). 

Follow Fr. Britton @frbritton on Facebook and @frblakebritton on Instagram. 

Bob Fu: How the Chinese Communist Party threatens liberty

“The Chinese Communist Party [is] not only posing a threat from far away, they are penetrating deeply in our society already, in every sphere of our society,” said Bob Fu, Ph.D., founder and president of ChinaAid, based in Midland, Texas. Fu, a pastor and author, is Senior Fellow for International Religious Freedom at Family Research Council and "was a student leader during the Tiananmen Square demonstrations for freedom and democracy in 1989," according to his ChinaAid profile.

“Pray for those who are persecuted and write letters to them to encourage them,” said Fu. “Write to our elected officials, instruct them. They need to speak for the people's voice — not the special interests and the Chinese lobbyist's voice, who really compromise our society.”

Follow him @BobFu4China and @ChinaAid on Twitter.

Elizabeth Lev: Discovering St. Joseph in art history

"What I found was this 1,600 year development to Joseph, which is just so compelling and so beautiful, how he goes from being absent in the early history of art to being truly the patron of the universal Church," said Elizabeth Lev, Ph.D., art historian, professor and author of books, including "The Silent Knight: A History of St. Joseph as Depicted in Art" (Sophia Institute Press).

Lev said she was inspired by the 2020 apostolic letter (With a Father's Heart) from Pope Francis  that described St. Joseph as having "creative courage."

St. Joseph is "a man of action, but then he's also a man of receptivity, of dreams, of meditation," said Lev. "So he has this wonderful balance between these angelic experiences he has — these angelic messages he's given — but then he gets up and he does something..."

Learn more at elizabeth-lev.com and follow her @lizlevrome on Twitter.