Abortion providers and pro-choice advocates asked the Supreme Court on Monday to block a Texas law going into effect on Wednesday that bans abortion after six weeks and allows private citizens to sue abortion providers for violating the law.

The pro-choice activists said Texas’s new legislation, which is set to go into effect Sept. 1, makes it so any private citizen — including pro-life activists — can sue individuals providing an abortion in violation of the six-week ban.

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/aug/30/abortion-providers-ask-supreme-court-block-texas-p/
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2. ‘Big Tech’ censorship of religion is real and deserves an effective response, critics say, By Kevin J. Jones, Catholic News Agency, August 31, 2021, 3:00 AM

The power of major internet companies like Facebook, Amazon, YouTube, and Twitter over public life is a particular threat to religious groups that focus on controversial issues like abortion, marriage, and sexuality, several commentators said at a roundtable last week. These groups should prepare for the possibility of censorship and organize effective countermeasures, they said.

“You might not know the hour nor the day you will be censored,” Joshua D. Holdenreid, vice president and executive director of the California-based Napa Legal Institute, said at a roundtable on internet censorship.

Holdenreid said those involved in public debates “need to plan ahead and assume that if they are a religious organization or faith-based organization operating in the public square and focused on an issue that’s related to pro-life (topics), marriage, sexuality, Christian anthropology, they should just assume that they will eventually run afoul of these vague and arbitrary terms and conditions that exist with these Big Tech platforms.”

The Ethics and Public Policy Project (EPPC), a D.C. thinktank that aims to apply “the Judeo-Christian tradition to contemporary questions of law, culture, and politics,” hosted the Aug. 26 roundtable “How Big Tech Censors Religious Voices, and How to Fight Back.” The roundtable follows years of debate and discussion about how major technology and media companies treat some religious voices.

https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/248827/big-tech-censorship-of-religion-is-real-and-deserves-an-effective-response-critics-say
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3. Pope says Afghan withdrawal failed to foresee ‘all the eventualities’, By Inés San Martín, Crux, August 31, 2021

In a new interview, Pope Francis appears to criticize the handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan by the United States that triggered scenes of chaos and violence at the Kabul airport, saying that while “I don’t want to judge” nevertheless “they didn’t take into account all the eventualities.”

In a brief fragment of the interview released today, the pope does not mention the United States or any other nation by name.

https://cruxnow.com/vatican/2021/08/pope-says-afghan-withdrawal-failed-to-foresee-all-the-eventualities/
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4. New book ‘God’s Diplomats’ unveils the secret history of Vatican diplomacy, By Claire Giangravé, Religion News Service, August 31, 2021, 5:14 AM

One of the Vatican’s most important but least studied departments is actually one of its most extensive: the massive network of lay and religious people engaged in peacemaking, information gathering and international diplomacy who throughout history have swayed governments and challenged kings.

In a new book, ‘ God’s Diplomats: Pope Francis, Vatican Diplomacy and America’s Armageddon,’ journalist Victor Gaetan unveils the inner workings of the Holy See’s diplomatic efforts. The book not only corrects the relative anonymity of the Catholic Church’s crucial function, but also discloses how Vatican diplomats often find themselves clashing with United States foreign policy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/religion/new-book-gods-diplomats-unveils-the-secret-history-of-vatican-diplomacy/2021/08/30/d610291a-09c0-11ec-a7c8-61bb7b3bf628_story.html
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5. Abortion Providers’ Baseless Request to Supreme Court to Enjoin Defendants in Texas Heartbeat Act Litigation, By Ed Whelan, National Review, August 30, 2021, 8:18 PM, Opinion

It’s not enough that Texas abortion providers continue to press a lawsuit against the Texas Heartbeat Act that should have been dismissed at the outset for lack of subject-matter jurisdiction. They’re now running to the Supreme Court to try to get the Justices to enjoin state officials from enforcing a law that the law itself prohibits those state officials from enforcing. They seem to imagine that courts can enjoin a law, when what courts actually can do (upon a proper showing) is enjoin defendants from enforcing a law, but only when (among other things) defendants actually have an enforcement role.

The short answer to the abortion providers’ application is that the ordinary rules governing pre-enforcement challenges to laws apply in this case as well, and those ordinary rules mean that the abortion providers lack standing and that there are no defendants against whom they are entitled to obtain relief. They can instead challenge the constitutionality of the Act if and when private plaintiffs undertake to enforce it against them.

Ed Whelan is a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the Ethics And Public Policy Center and holds EPPC’s Antonin Scalia Chair in Constitutional Studies.

https://www.nationalreview.com/bench-memos/abortion-providers-baseless-request-to-supreme-court-to-enjoin-defendants-in-texas-heartbeat-act-litigation/
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6. Pope Francis Advances Sainthood Cause of Italian Catholic Priest Who Saved Jews in WWII, Like St. Maximilian Kolbe, Father Cortese was a Franciscan friar who directed a Catholic publication and was tortured and killed by the Nazis, By Courtney Mares, Catholic News Agency, August 30, 2021

Pope Francis has advanced the sainthood causes of a Franciscan friar who helped to rescue Jews during the Holocaust and a mother who sacrificed her life to save her unborn child.

Father Placido Cortese is remembered for using his confessional in the Basilica of St. Anthony in Padua to clandestinely communicate with an underground network that helped Jewish people and British prisoners of war escape the Nazi occupation of Italy.

Known locally as “the Italian Father Kolbe,” the priest is now considered “venerable” by the Catholic Church after the Pope recognized him for living a life that was “heroic in virtue” on Aug. 30.

https://www.ncregister.com/cna/pope-francis-advances-sainthood-cause-of-italian-catholic-priest-who-saved-jews-in-wwii
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