1. The Perverse Economics of Assisted Suicide, By Louise Perry, The New York Times, July 22, 2025, 1:00 AM, Opinion
Ms. Perry is a journalist based in Britain.
In June, lawmakers in my native country, Britain, approved plans to legalize assisted suicide. If the bill becomes law, England and Wales will join more than a dozen countries and 11 U.S. states in permitting medically assisted dying.
Every one of these jurisdictions has a total fertility rate below the replacement threshold. I do not think this is a coincidence.
About 30 years ago, P.D. James’s prescient novel “The Children of Men” imagined that a birthrate crisis would induce governments to facilitate the suicides of the elderly in a ritual known as “the Quietus.” Looking at the rush among some low fertility countries to legalize assisted suicide, I fear that Ms. James’s vision is already being realized.
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There is a very clear problem with assisted suicide in its new guise: The state, with its almighty power, is tasked with both paying for the support of the old and disabled and regulating their dying. Encouraging citizens to accept a Quietus may seem like a cost-saving measure at a time when the financial burden of their care has never been greater. For all of the problems with the American health care system, its largely privatized structure means that it is less vulnerable to these perverse incentives. The moral peril is greatest in countries like my own, in which a socialized health care and pension system has a strong incentive to winnow down its most expensive users.
Governments do seem to realize this. A friend who used to work in the British Treasury once told me (in a moment of candor) that the only problem with MAID programs — from a financial perspective — is that they seem too popular among the young and insufficiently popular among the old. Nevertheless, they can save the state a good deal of money: A 2017 research paper predicted that MAID could save Canada between $34.7 million and $138.8 million in health care spending annually. The British government released its own forecasts in the lead-up to the vote on the country’s more restrictive assisted dying bill, which showed that though initial staffing and training costs could be significant, the government could potentially save tens of millions of pounds per year once the scheme is established.
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In “The Children of Men,” it is eventually revealed that the mass suicides of the Quietus are not freely chosen after all. A whistle-blower who has witnessed the use of violence and coercion as elderly people are led away to their deaths takes his concerns to a senior government official, who stonewalls him with an appeal to bureaucratic process. “The Quietus is, of course, absolutely voluntary,” she insists. “There are all the proper safeguards.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/22/opinion/assisted-suicide-economics.html
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2. GOP lawmakers offer resolution condemning the persecution of Christians across the globe, By Seth McLaughlin, The Washington Times, July 21, 2025
Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rep. Riley Moore of West Virginia have introduced a resolution condemning the persecution of Christians in Muslim-majority countries.
The two Republicans also are urging President Trump to use all the diplomatic tools he has at his disposal to protect these persecuted Christians, saying the United States must prioritize stopping religious-based violence and religious-based discrimination across the globe.
“We cannot sit on the sidelines as Christians around the world are being persecuted for declaring Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. We must condemn these heinous crimes,” Mr. Hawley said in a news release. “Year after year, the number of Christians murdered by extremists in Nigeria has numbered in the thousands.”
“Millions more have been displaced. We cannot allow this to continue. I urge my colleagues to join me in condemning the persecution of Christians around the world by supporting this resolution,” he said.
The resolution says more Christians have been killed in Nigeria than anywhere else in the world, but that serious problems still exist across Africa and the Middle East, including in Algeria, Libya, and Egypt.
The Observatory of Religious Freedom in Africa released a report last year that showed from 2019 to 2023 “more Nigerian Christians were victims of violence than Nigerians holding to other religious affiliations.”
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2025/jul/21/gop-lawmakers-offer-resolution-condemning-persecution-christians/
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3. Children’s National Hospital in DC to end gender transition medical interventions, Children’s National cites ‘escalating legal and regulatory risks’ as Justice Department investigates pediatric transgender procedures, By Danielle Wallace, Fox News, July 21, 2025, 8:57 AM
Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., has announced that it will no longer provide gender transition-related medical interventions.
The web page for the hospital’s “Gender Development Program” displays a message for existing and new patients announcing the change, which will go into effect Aug. 30.
“In light of escalating legal and regulatory risks to Children’s National, our providers, and the families we serve, we will be discontinuing the prescription of gender-affirming medications,” the message says. “Mental health and other support services for LGBT patients remain available. You are always welcome at Children’s National for your other medical needs.”
“We know this change will have a significant impact on affected patients, families and staff. Our care teams are working directly with families of current patients to support them,” it adds, urging people with questions to contact the hospital directly.
The announcement comes after the Justice Department on July 9 sent more than 20 subpoenas to doctors and clinics involved in performing transgender medical procedures on children.
https://www.foxnews.com/health/childrens-national-hospital-dc-end-gender-transition-medical-interventions
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4. Nigeria is still imposing restrictions on religious freedom, U.S. agency says, By Crux Staff, July 22, 2025
Nigeria’s legal system is imposing systematic restrictions on freedom of religion or belief, specifically with its use of blasphemy laws in 12 Nigerian states, according to a statement issued on Monday from the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF).
In April, the Nigerian government assured the United States of its commitment to uphold freedom of religion and expression.
Data compiled by Intersociety and corroborated by International Christian Concern (ICC) shows that over 18,000 Christians were killed in Nigeria between 2015 and 2023, making it the deadliest country in the world for Christians.
A Country Update on Nigeria issued by the USCIRF on Monday said religious communities in Nigeria are facing ongoing, systematic, and egregious violations of their ability to practice their faith freely.
“The Nigerian government’s enforcement of blasphemy laws and an increase in violent attacks by nonstate entities targeting religious communities constitute significant restrictions on freedom of religion or belief (FoRB). Twelve state governments and the federal government in Nigeria enforce blasphemy laws, prosecuting and imprisoning individuals perceived to have insulted religion,” the report said.
It noted those targeted include Christians, Muslims, traditional practitioners, and humanists.
https://cruxnow.com/church-in-africa/2025/07/nigeria-is-still-imposing-restrictions-on-religious-freedom-u-s-agency-says
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5. The Scopes Trial, Cardinal Schönborn, and the Enduring Quest for Intelligent Design, By Father Raymond J. de Souza, National Catholic Register, July 21, 2025, Commentaries
Exactly a century ago, national attention was focused on a Tennessee courthouse. It was truly — with apologies to O.J. Simpson some 70 years later — the “trial of the century.”
In July 1925, it seemed that the very Word of God was in the dock, in the apparently contesting accounts of origins offered by the Bible and Darwin’s theory of evolution. Even today, the legacy of the “Scopes Monkey Trial” lives.
Twenty years ago this month, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn stirred up an intense controversy with a column in The New York Times, “Finding Design in Nature.” He challenged “randomness” in what he called the “neo-Darwinian sense — an unguided, unplanned process of random variation.”
The July 2005 op-ed garnered much attention because Cardinal Schönborn — retired just this year as the archbishop of Vienna — was then the leading theological light in the College of Cardinals, and a protégé of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, elected Pope Benedict XVI just a few months beforehand in April 2005. The two of them had worked closely together on the Catechism of the Catholic Church, perhaps the most important project of Pope St. John Paul II’s long pontificate.
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The centennial of the “Scopes Monkey Trial” this month — it concluded on July 21, 1925 — provides the context for how Christians, especially American Christians, think about how they should think about evolution. That played out 20 years ago in the Schönborn controversy.
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In 1925, Msgr. Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Catholic priest, was at work on what we now call the “big bang theory,” a scientific account that he thought consistent with Genesis. It’s more than that, actually: “Let there be light” is Msgr. Lemaître’s theory rendered in biblical poetry
“Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth,” wrote Pope John Paul in 1998. Those two wings were somewhat broken in Tennessee a hundred years ago. The cultural mending is still underway.
https://www.ncregister.com/commentaries/scopes-trial-cardinal-schonborn-intelligent-design
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6. Who are the Christians of Palestine?, The small community is actually very diverse, ByLuke Coppen, The Pillar, July 21, 2025
When television news bulletins reported July 17 on the deaths of three people at Holy Family Church in Gaza City, some viewers might have been left confused.
Perhaps that’s because a cursory knowledge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might suggest just two communities are caught in the crossfire: Israelis (uniformly Jewish) and Palestinians (exclusively Muslim).
But it’s not so simple. Jews comprise around 73% of Israel’s population, while roughly 21% are Arabs. Arab citizens of Israel are mainly Muslims, but also include Christians and Druze.
In the Palestinian territories, roughly 99% of the population is Muslim. The remaining 1% is mostly Christian but also includes some Druze and even descendants of the biblical Samaritan community.
There are also significant distinctions within each religious group. While the Holy Family Church is Catholic, the dead and injured in the July 17 strike reportedly included Greek Orthodox Christians. Knowing this helps us to understand why the incident also reverberated in the Orthodox world, as well as among Catholics.
https://www.pillarcatholic.com/p/who-are-the-christians-of-palestine
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7. Bishop Barron to address U.S. pilgrims in Rome during Jubilee of Youth, By Courtney Mares, Catholic News Agency, July 21, 2025, 12:44 PM
Bishop Robert Barron will deliver a keynote address to more than 3,500 young American pilgrims at a special event in Rome on July 30, part of the global Jubilee of Youth celebrations expected to draw more than 100,000 young people to the Eternal City.
The U.S. National Pilgrim Gathering at the Papal Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls is being organized by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and will include Eucharistic adoration, catechesis, and a procession with relics of 12 saints and blesseds significant to the American Church and Catholic youth.
Barron, the bishop of Winona-Rochester, Minnesota, and chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life, and Youth, will speak on what it means to be a missionary witness in today’s world.
Pilgrims will have the opportunity to walk through the basilica’s Holy Door, opened as part of the Catholic Church’s jubilee year observances, and to pray before the tomb of St. Paul.
https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/265465/bishop-barron-to-address-us-pilgrims-in-rome-during-jubilee-of-youth
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TCA Media Monitoring provides a snapshot from national newspapers and major Catholic press outlets of coverage regarding significant Catholic Church news and current issues with which the Catholic Church is traditionally or prominently engaged. The opinions and views expressed in the articles do not necessarily reflect the views of The Catholic Association.
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