The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned President Biden's attempt to erase the student loan debt for millions of Americans, the CBN website reports today (June 30, 2023).
Te court ruled today that the Biden administration overstepped its authority.
The 6-3 decision ends the $400 billion plan which means borrowers will likely have to start repaying their loans by late August.
Young people are being confused about their traditional gender roles and responsibilities, and the importance of marriage and family, the New American website reports today (June 29, 2023).
Consequently, fewer people are choosing to get married or to have children.
Young commentators have reflected on the reasons that led to the decline of marriage in America. These include the harmful impacts of the sexual revolution, the lies of the feminist movement, and perverted sexual content taught in public schools.
A beloved couple, who didn't show up for their 50th wedding anniversary celebration at Our Lady of Christians Church in Newton, Mass. as expected on June 25, were found brutally stabbed and beaten to death along with the wife's mother inside their Newton home, the Christian Post website reports today (June 28, 2023).
The victims, Gilda D'Amore, 73, her husband, Bruno D'Amore, 74, and her mother, Lucia Arpino, 97, were discovered bloodied and battered by a person known to them , the Mddlesex County District Attorney's Office said.
Christopher Ferguson, 41, of Newton has been charged with murder, two counts of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon causing serious bodily injury, and burglary.
The Supreme Court ruled today (June 27, 2023) that state courts can curtail the actions of their legislatures when it comes to federal redistricting and elections, rejecting arguments by North Carolina Republicans that would have altered races for Congress and president in that state and beyond, the AP website reports.
The justices, by a 6-3 vote, upheld a decision by North Carolina's top court that struck down a congressional districting plan as excessively partisan under state law.
The Supreme Court did, however, indicate there could be limits on state court efforts to police elections for Congress and president.
Amid a rocky year, the pope's Commission for the Protection of Minors and Vulnerable Persons has drafted an updated version of global anti-abuse safeguarding guidelines along with a survey for feedback on the norms , the Crux website reports today (June 25, 2023).
In a statement on June 23, the commission said the new Universal Guidelines Framework (UGF) was approved during its most recent plenary assembly held in Rome in May, and serves "as a model to define the safeguarding standards to be implemented in every local church across the world."
The primary aim of the guidelines, the commission said, is "to promote protection from abuse, in the Church according to existing good practices in safeguarding."
A new report by Giving USA shows that charitable giving in America fell sharply in 2022, with less than half the population making donations, the Worthy News website reports today (June 24, 2023).
Last year's decline in giving represents only the fourth time in 40 years that year-over-year donations fell.
The annual Giving USA survey is conducted by Indiana University's Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and the McLean, Virginia-based Giving USA Foundation.
At least five people were killed as hundreds of thousands were without power after tornadoes and storms ripped through a handful of states in the South last week, the Christian Post website reports today (June 23, 2023).
Perryton, a small town in the Texas Panhandle, was particularly hard-hit by a tornado that left three dead, injured dozens, and damaged at least 150 homes on June 15.
Meanwhile, storms left over 430,000 people without power in Oklahoma, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi,and Arkansas since June 18, according to PowerOutage.us.
New research shows that women may be more likely to die after a heart attack than men, the Health website reports today (June 22, 2023).
The findings suggest that women may need additional monitoring and check-ins after a cardiac event to remain well.
Heart disease is the leading cause of death among women in the U.S.
Synod of Bishops assembly members will be asked to find ways to build community, encourage the contribution of every baptized person, and strengthen the Church's primary mission of Gospel-sharing , said the working document for the October gathering, the Catholic News website reports today (June 21, 2023).
"A synodal Church is founded on the recognition of a common dignity deriving from baptism, which makes all who receive its sons and daughters of God, and therefore brothers and sisters in Christ, inhabited by the one Spirit and sent to fulfill a common mission," said the Instrumentum Laboris, which was released by the Vatican on June 19.
The Synod of Bishops assembly members are scheduled to complete their work on the Synod in October 2023.
As Americans flock to the beach this summer, they are often greeted with disconcerting news:Their destination might be smelly with dead fish or rotting seaweed -- and danger often lurks from rip currents and even shark attacks, the USA Today website reports today (June 20, 2023).
In a global warming world, those problems are expected to get worse, experts say.
"The climate is changing and it's changing drastically," said Todd Crowl, director of the Institute of Environment at Florida International University in Miami. "It is measurable and happening."
At his first political rally since announcing his re-election campaign for president in April, Joe Biden told a crowd of labor union supporters in Philadelphia yesterday: "Wall Street didn't build America--you did," The Guardian website reports today (June 18, 2023).
"If the investment bankers of this country went on strike tomorrow, no one would notice," Biden said during a speech which alluded to his blue-collar childhood roots in Scranton, Penn.
Yesterday's rally was hosted by the AFL-CIO, a federation of 60 labor unions representing 12.5 million workers in the U.S., which has endorsed Biden for his re-election in 2024.
In the U.S. bishops' new 10-year national pastroral plan for Hispanic ministry success, Alejandro Aguilera-Titus envisions a U.S. Catholic Church in 2033 alive with Hispanic participation and influence as both by lay and ordained leaders, the Crux website reports today (June 17, 2023).
"My hope [in 10 years] would be a Church in which Hispanic/Latino Catholic leaders have a very strong presence in all aspects of the Church, Aguilera -Titus, the assistant director for Hispanic affairs of the U.S. Bishops' told Crux.
"More bishops, more priests, more religious men and women, more deacons, more religious ministers, more children in Catholic schools, more teachers."
The Supreme Court on June 15 preserved the system that gives preference to Native American families in foster care and adoption peroceedings of native children, rejecting a broad attack from some Republican-led states that it is based on race, the AP News website reports today (June 16, 2023).
The court left in place the 1978 Indian Child Welfare Act, which was enacted to address concerns the Native children were being separated from their families and placed in non-Native homes.
Tribal leaders have backed the law as a means of preserving their families, traditions, and cultures.
The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) passed an amendment yesterday to officially prohibit churches in the denomination from having a female pastor, the WND website reports today (June 15, 2023).
The convention, which took place in New Orleans this year, had voted earlier to remove two churches from the denomination for employing female pastors in contradiction of the church's constitution.
A second vote confirmed a proposed amendment by adding it to SBC's constitution affirming that only men can be appointed as pastor or elder "as qualified by scripture."
Hundreds of Protestant Christians in Southeastern Germany have attended a church service that was nearly entirely generated by artificial intelligence (AI) despite warnings the invention could destroy humanity, the Worthy News website reports today (June 14, 2023).
The June 9 AI church service was among hundreds of events at the convention of Protestants in the towns of Nuremberg and neighboring Fuerth in the German state of Bavaria.
Witnesses said it drew such immense interest that people formed a long queue outside the 19th-century, neo-Gothic St. Paul Church in Fuerth an hour before it began.
Eucharistic adoration can bring college-age students and young adults to a better understanding and love of God, whether they are Catholic or not, the National Catholic Register website reports today (June 13, 2023).
"We actually have a pretty high number of non-Catholics coming to adoration regularly," said Marie Putbrese, a Fellowship of Catholic University Students (FOCUS) missionary at Lindenwood University in St. Charles, Missouri.
"Our Bible studies are open to Catholics and non-Catholics alike," she explains, pointing to what often opens the door to the interest that develops in finding out about adoration," she said.
The number of congregations approved to disaffiliate from the United Methodist Church (UMC) in the last two years has surpassed the 5,000 mark, the Christian Post website reports today (June 12, 2023).
Last week, according to numbers compiled by UMNews, the number of churches that have had their disaffiliation votes approved by their annual conferences under Paragraph 2553 of the UMC Book of Discipline went from around 4,000 on June 6 to 5,321 as of June 9.
There was a strong increase in departures beginning last year, with around 2,000 congregations having their disaffiliation votes approved in 2022 and over 3,000 so far in 2023.
On June 9, 2023, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) sent out an action alert for Catholics to ask their members of Congress to address the online child exploitation which they argue "threatens the safety and well-being of our young people and destroys families and communities," the Crux website reports.
They wrote the letter not just as USCCB chairmen or pastors, but also as leaders of an institution that for many years failed to meet its responsibility to protect children.
"The ability of a child to grow into adulthood in peace and security is both a human right and a demand of the common good the dignity of the human person requires protections for our young people so that they may flourish as they mature," they added.
A new study on faith and relationships suggests that absent fathers and collapsed marriages might be two of the best explanations for why Christianity is declining in the U.S., the Christian Post website reports today (June 10, 2023).
The Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships, research recently released by the church-consulting organization Communio, reports that "family decline appears to fuel faith decline."
The research comes as marriage rates have dropped 31% since 2000 and 61% since 1970, while less than half of all adults under 30 today grew up in a home with married parents.
Pastor Rick Warren, founder of Saddleback Church, announced yesterday the release of a third video in his series, "SBC at the Crossroads," in which he addresses the decline of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) , the Religion News Service website reports today (June 9, 2023).
Available at SBCStand.com, Warren challenges that when you observe and listen to Baptists today, it's clear that many are unfamiliar with the roots of the denomination.
Warren urges Southern Baptists to "remember, repent, and return to the things we did at first."
An 18 -year-old, who just graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University campus high school in Richmond, and his father were killed in a shooting yesterday, the Yahoo News website reports today (June 7, 2023).
Tameeka Jackson-Smith told NBC News her son, Shawn Jackson and her husband, Renzo Smith, 36, were killed in the shooting, which left five others injured, according to police.
The suspect, who has not been publicly identified, faces two counts of second-degree murder, Richmond's interim police chief, Rick Edwards, said at a news conference. A second person who was taken into custody was also involved, he said.
Former N.J. Governor and 2016 presidential candidate Chris Christie filed his paperwork today for another White House bid, The Hill website reports today (June 6, 2023).
Christie suspended his last campaign in February 2016 after finishing sixth in the N.H. primary.
Despite having been allied with Trump at times in the past, Christie has become a harsh critic.
If you are considering doing missionary work, but don't know where to start, there are many resources available to guide you in the process, the Christian Post website reports today (June 5, 2023).
Health care can be a challenging piece to the puzzle, but Medi-Share can help.
Medi-Share believes you shouldn't have to sacrifice your health care wile serving overseas. It offers affordable, reliable solutions to missionary members, and can save up to 50% or more on their health care costs both at home and internationally.
Christians in Syria continue to face "genocidal" attacks not only from jihadists inside the country, but also from Islamist-affiliated ,NATO member Turkey, the Worthy News website reports today (June 3, 2023).
The NGO Genocide Watch issued a Genocide Emergency Alert after Turkey carried out attacks against Kurds and Christians in northern Syria last November.
"These military attacks by Recep Tayyip Erdogan's regime are part of a wider Turkish policy of annihilation of the Kurdish and Assyrian (Christian) people in northern Syria and Iraq," Genocide Watch said.
A new survey measuring antisemitic attitudes across 10 European countries, includes a surprising finding, the Religion News website reports today(June 2, 2023)
.As arguably the world's most famous Jew, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky may also be contributing to a decline in antisemitic attitudes not only in Ukraine but also in neighboring Poland to the west, and Russia to the east.
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In the Eastern European countries of Hungary, Poland, Ukraine, and Russia, where vicious stereotypes of Jews have historically been higher, there was a marked decrease in antisemitic attitudes since 2019, when the survey was last fielded.
While maintaining its stance against IVF (In Vitro Fertilization), the Vatican issued a new document May 30, 2023, sounding an alarm about declining birth rates and touting alternatives to methods of artificial reproduction the church sees as morally unacceptable, the Crux website reports.
The text also reiterates the Church's traditional opposition to contraception, despite speculation in some quarters that Pope Francis might be rethinking the teaching of St. Paul VI in his 1968 encyclical "Humanae Vitae" condemning artificial birth control.
Called the Global Family Compact, the document is an initiative of the Political Academy of Social Sciences and the Vatican's Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life consisting of four main action points, and was accompanied by a message from Pope Francis.
