World Religions News

An aerial view of the Pentagon, Washington, D.C., May 11, 2021. / Credit: Air Force Staff Sgt. Brittany A. Chase, DOD, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Dec 10, 2024 / 06:00 am (CNA).

Democratic lawmakers on Capitol Hill are threatening to oppose the U.S. government’s defense spending bill for the next fiscal year over its inclusion of language that would prevent the Department of Defense (DOD) from providing health care coverage that funds transgender drugs and surgeries for minors. 

Although the current draft was the product of negotiations between Republican and Democratic lawmakers, some Democrats have considered abandoning the final version amid its inclusion of banning gender transitions for children.

“The final text includes a provision prohibiting medical treatment for military dependents under the age of 18 who are diagnosed with gender dysphoria,” Democratic Rep. Adam Smith, who serves as the ranking member for the House Armed Services Committee, said in a statement.

“Blanketly denying health care to people who clearly need it, just because of a biased notion against transgender people, is wrong,” Smith continued. “This provision injected a level of partisanship not traditionally seen in defense bills. Speaker [Mike] Johnson is pandering to the most extreme elements of his party to ensure that he retains his speakership. In doing so, he has upended what had been a bipartisan process.”

Republican lawmakers included the language in the must-pass National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2025, which was unveiled this past weekend. The primary function of the NDAA is to fund the nation’s military. 

Republican lawmakers sought to include similar language related to gender transitions in last year’s NDAA but eventually abandoned the effort when they failed to get enough support in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Under the proposal, taxpayer-funded health care programs provided by the DOD for members of the military and their families would prevent any coverage of transgender drugs and surgeries for anyone under the age of 18. It would not affect these services for adults.

Currently, the DOD offers coverage for transgender drugs for all ages, which includes puberty blockers and hormones through its TRICARE program, which serves about 9.5 million service members, military retirees, and dependents. TRICARE does not currently provide coverage for transgender surgeries.

According to a study published by the American Public Health Association in 2023, at least 25,000 children sought treatment for gender dysphoria through TRICARE in 2017 — and about 900 received transgender drugs such as puberty blockers or hormones. It’s unclear whether those numbers have increased in recent years.

A Republican effort to end the DOD’s policy to fund travel for military members and their families to obtain abortions was ultimately removed from the NDAA proposal.

In a statement, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson said lawmakers “remain determined to confront increasingly hostile threats from communist China, Russia, and Iran, and this legislation provides our military with the tools they need to deter our enemies.”

“This legislation includes House-passed provisions to restore our focus on military lethality and to end the radical woke ideology being imposed on our military by permanently banning transgender medical treatment for minors and countering antisemitism,” he added.

Smith’s objection to the NDAA proposal comes as activist groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) are urging Democrats to vote against the legislation. 

“Medical care should stay between families and their doctors but this provision would baselessly and recklessly inject politics into the health care military families receive,” Mike Zamore, the ACLU national director of policy and government affairs, said in a statement. 

“Nobody should have to choose between serving the country and ensuring their child has the health care they need to live and thrive,” he added. “Members of Congress must vote against the defense bill because of the inclusion of this deeply harmful, unconstitutional provision.”

The ACLU is currently representing Tennessee families who are challenging a state law that prohibits doctors from providing children with transgender drugs and surgeries. The United States Supreme Court heard the case’s arguments on Dec. 4.

Transgender issues dividing Congress

Most Democratic lawmakers openly support gender transitions for minors. However, following the 2024 election, the two House Democrats — Rep. Seth Moulton and Rep. Tom Suozzi — have accused their party of going too far to the left on issues related to transgenderism, particularly when it comes to biological boys who identify as girls playing in girls’ sports.

Meanwhile, Republican Sen. Roger Marshall is introducing a bill to prohibit surgical gender transitions of minors nationwide. The legislation is called the Safeguarding the Overall Protection (STOP) of Minors Act.

In a statement posted on X, Marshall, an OB-GYN physician by profession, said that most Americans “want a complete ban on any performance of mutilation, sterilization, and castration procedures on children,” which is what prompted him to introduce the bill. 

As of December, transgender drugs and surgeries for children are prohibited in 24 states and another two states ban only the surgeries. Gender transitions for minors remain legal in the remaining 24 states and several have enacted laws that explicitly protect access to those drugs and surgeries.

President-elect Donald Trump has said he supports a federal law banning the surgical gender transitions of minors. Some scholars have argued that the incoming Trump administration could use regulatory authority to restrict the gender transitions of minors nationally.

The Holy House of Our Lady in the Shrine of Loreto. / Credit: Tatiana Dyuvbanova/Shutterstock

Rome Newsroom, Dec 10, 2024 / 04:00 am (CNA).

What do Galileo, Mozart, Descartes, Cervantes, and St. Thérèse of Lisieux have in common? They all traveled hundreds of miles to step inside the Virgin Mary’s house, which is preserved inside a basilica in the small Italian town of Loreto.

Catholic pilgrims have flocked to the Holy House of Loreto since the 14th century to stand inside the walls where tradition holds the Virgin Mary was born, raised, and greeted by the angel Gabriel.

In other words, if the structure actually comes from the ancient house in Nazareth, the holy house’s walls witnessed when the “Word became flesh” at the Annunciation, a point on which the history of humanity turned.

Pope Francis elevated the feast of Our Lady of Loreto in 2019 by decreeing that it be included in the current Roman calendar as an optional memorial each year on Dec. 10.

Tradition holds that the Holy House arrived in Loreto on Dec. 10, 1294, after a miraculous rescue from the Holy Land as the Crusaders were driven out of Palestine at the end of the 13th century.

There is an often-repeated story that angels carried the Holy House from Palestine to Italy. While modern listeners may doubt the legend’s veracity, historic documents have vindicated the beliefs of pious pilgrims over the centuries — with an ironic twist.

In 1900, the pope’s physician, Joseph Lapponi, discovered documents in the Vatican archive stating that in the 13th century a noble Byzantine family, the Angeli family, rescued “materials” from “Our Lady’s House” from Muslim invaders and then had them transported to Italy for the building of a shrine.

The name Angeli means “angels” in both Greek and Latin.

Further historic diplomatic correspondence, not published until 1985, discusses the “holy stones taken away from the House of Our Lady, Mother of God.” In the fall of 1294, “holy stones” were included in the dowry of Ithamar Angeli for her marriage to Philip II of Anjou, son of King Charles II of Naples.

A coin minted by a member of the Angeli family was also found in the foundation of the house in Loreto. In Italy, coins were often inserted into a building’s foundation to indicate who was responsible for its construction.

Excavations in both Nazareth and Loreto found similar materials at both sites. The stones that make up the lower part of the walls of the Holy House in Loreto appear to have been finished with a technique particular to the Nabataeans, which also was widespread in Palestine. There are inscriptions in syncopated Greek characters with contiguous Hebrew letters that read “O Jesus Christ, Son of God,” written in the same style inscribed in the cave in Nazareth.

Archaeologists also confirmed a tradition of Loreto that third-century Christians had transformed Mary’s house in Nazareth into a place of worship by building a synagogue-style church around the house. A seventh-century bishop who traveled to Nazareth noted a church built at the house where the Annunciation took place.

From St. Francis de Sales to St. Louis de Montfort, many saints visited the Holy House of Loreto over the centuries. St. Charles Borromeo made four pilgrimages in 1566, 1572, 1579, and 1583.

St. John Paul II in 1993 called the Holy House of Loreto the “foremost shrine of international import dedicated to the Blessed Virgin.”

The victory over the Turks at Lepanto was attributed to the Virgin of Loreto by St. Pius V, leading both General Marcantonio Colonna and John of Austria to make pilgrimages to the shrine in 1571 and 1576 respectively.

Christopher Columbus made a vow to the Madonna of Loreto in 1493 when he and his crew were caught in a storm during their return journey from the Americas. He later sent a sailor to Loreto on a pilgrimage of thanksgiving on behalf of the entire crew.

Queen Christina of Sweden offered her royal crown and scepter to the Virgin Mary in Loreto in 1655 after her conversion from the Lutheran faith to Catholicism.

Napoleon plundered the shrine and its treasury on Feb. 13, 1797, taking with him precious jewels and other gifts offered to the Virgin Mary by European aristocracy, including several French monarchs, over the centuries. Yet, the object of real value in the eyes of pilgrims, the Holy House of Mary, was left unharmed.

In a homily in 1995, St. John Paul II called the Holy House of Loreto “the house of all God’s adopted children.”

He continued: “The threads of the history of the whole of humankind are tied anew in that house. It is the Shrine of the House of Nazareth, to which the Church that is in Italy is tied by providence, that the latter rediscovers a quickening reminder of the mystery of the Incarnation, thanks to which each man is called to the dignity of the Son of God.”

This article was first published on Dec. 10, 2022, and has been updated.

An alarming number of states have failed because they don’t have what only Israel has: A founding document that holds the state together around the shared ideals of freedom and individual rights.

The post While Mideast is in Meltdown, World Still Obsessed with Israel appeared first on Jewish Journal.

(RNS) — The scene representing the birth of Jesus is a common December sight, artfully arranged on church lawns or entryways across the country.

But in some churches this year, the nativity crèche is looking a bit different.

The manger has been replaced with a pile of rocks, and the baby Jesus is swaddled not with a thin blanket but with a black-and-white keffiyeh, the Middle Eastern-style scarf that has become a symbol of Palestinians’ resistance to Israeli aggression.

This tableau, often called Christ in the Rubble, first appeared last year in the town of Bethlehem outside the Evangelical Lutheran Christmas Church, pastored by the prominent Palestinian minister and activist Munther Issac. All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, California, quickly copied it and constructed one on its lawn.

This Advent season, leading to Christmas, they are becoming more common. Even Pope Francis was presented a crèche Saturday (Dec. 7) by two Bethlehem-based artists, featuring a baby Jesus nestled in a keffiyeh.

The pontiff declared “Enough wars, enough violence!” while receiving the delegation of Palestinian groups that organized the project.

In Washington, D.C., less than half a mile from the U.S. Capitol, another church assembled a Christ in the Rubble crèche last week.

The nativity scene outside St. Mark’s Episcopal Church features a Black baby Jesus swaddled in a keffiyeh lying in a bed of broken bricks and clumps of concrete and wire.

It is intended to bring awareness to Israel’s ongoing war that has leveled the Gaza Strip and killed more than 44,000 Palestinians, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, as well as to the plight of Palestinians in Bethlehem, located in the occupied West Bank. While most Palestinians are Muslim, there is a thriving Palestinian Christian community in Bethlehem, the site of Jesus’ birth, according to the gospels of Matthew and Luke.

“At Christmas, we sing about Bethlehem and we put up our manger scenes and talk about this story of Jesus being born in this town of Bethlehem with its themes of peace, love, joy and hope,” said Lindsey Jones-Renaud, a lay member of St. Mark’s who was part of the team that assembled the crèche last week. “But there’s such a disconnect between all that and what is actually happening in Bethlehem right now and in the surrounding lands.”

Since the Hamas-led attacks on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on West Bank Palestinians have skyrocketed. Israeli settlers have vandalized Palestinian property and burned homes and cars, often as Israeli security forces stand by. About 900 West Bank Palestinians have been killed in 1,400 attacks, according to the United Nations. More than 50 West Bank Palestinian communities have been forced to abandon their homes.

On Sunday, Jones-Renaud flew to Israel on a 10-day delegation that will tour the West Bank in a show of solidarity with the Palestinian villagers — and, if necessary, to act as a buffer to protect them from the escalated attacks by Israeli settlers and the Israeli army. It is the fourth trip planned by the group Christians for Ceasefire.

Multiple U.S. Christian organizations have protested Israel’s harsh military rule on Palestinians. They have called for a cease-fire and an end to U.S. military aid to Israel. The U.S. has supplied more than $22 billion in military aid to Israel since the war in Gaza began, according to a Brown University study.

Now, during the season of Advent, these organizations are working  on campaigns to bring greater awareness to the plight of Palestinians.

“We need to take more risks to stop the killing in the spirit of Christmas and the birth of the Prince of Peace,” said Eli McCarthy, a professor of theology at Georgetown University and a Just Peace Fellow with the Franciscan Action Network. (Jesus is often referred to as the Prince of Peace.)

Friends of Sabeel North America, an interdenominational Christian organization working on Palestinian justice, is encouraging a Preach Palestine Day of Action in conjunction with International Human Rights Day, which falls on Tuesday. 

FOSNA’s Michigan chapter is planning to install two moveable “Christ in the Rubble” crèches this month, one at a park and another at a market — both in Detroit.

“Symbols matter and visuals matter, and our understanding in all of our traditions, Judaism, Islam and Christianity, is that God is always on the side of the oppressed,” said Kim Redigan, a member of the FOSNA Michigan group and a Catholic. “God is on the side of those who are suffering. God is on the side of those who are being crushed.”

Some churches will also be participating in a Mennonite Action event on Dec. 21 called the “Longest Night for Gaza Service” to grieve the loss of Palestinian lives. And on Dec. 28, the Feast of the Holy Innocents, some churches will take public actions on the day Christians commemorate the Gospel story of the massacre of male children in Bethlehem by King Herod.

“Scripture reminds us to seek justice, show mercy and protect innocent life,” said Steven Scammacca, a member of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church who worked on the Christ in the Rubble crèche alongside Jones-Renaud. “Those values are clearly violated by the violence in Gaza.”

(RNS) — In the decades since he was executed in Germany for crimes of high treason, Dietrich Bonhoeffer has become one of the most celebrated religious thinkers of our time, inspiring many of our era’s most influential leaders, intellectuals and artists, from Desmond Tutu and Vaclav Havel to Jimmy Carter, Angela Merkel and U2’s Bono. He is a model to millions more who confront the blood-stained face of history with courage and conviction.

British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge summed up how this brilliant pastor-turned-conspirator against Hitler became a hero in widely disparate religious traditions: “Some words Gorky used about Tolstoy come into my mind: ‘Look what a wonderful man is living on this earth!’”

But with the adoration of Bonhoeffer’s legacy comes sharp disagreement over its meaning and political uses.

A quick Google search of Bonhoeffer — or better, “Are we living in a Bonhoeffer moment?” — will put the reader directly into the crossfire between liberals and conservatives, each laying claim to the great Christian martyr’s moral inheritance. The relative dearth of explicit political discussion in his writings has made it easy for those with differing theological and ideological stances to cast Bonhoeffer in their own image.

In fact, Bonhoeffer’s political views, as gleaned from his biography, don’t map neatly onto today’s American left-right divides (nor onto the political map of the 1930s America that Bonhoeffer twice visited).

When today’s progressives laud him, they rarely cite his posthumously published book “Ethics” that called abortion “nothing but murder.” Nor do they recall his preference for monarchy over democracy, his dismissal of psychotherapy and psychoanalysis as the mere “gnawing away of otherwise healthy people’s confidence and security” or his sartorial extravagance. His privilege as a golden child of Berlin’s posh Grunewald district, which he wielded freely and without apology, tends to go unremarked among those who prize his “view from below” and solidarity with the poor.

On the religious right, a new generation of activist theocrats has convinced the rank and file that life under any Democratic administration will become a Fourth Reich and have turned Bonhoeffer into a political avatar. Who would not wish that a person we so greatly admire would have seen the world as we do?

Except that MAGA enthusiasts such as author and radio personality Eric Metaxas have transformed Bonhoeffer with little basis in fact. Ignoring biographical features he doesn’t like and inventing new parts he needs, Metaxas has recast Bonhoeffer’s story as a battle cry for conservative Christian activism in every American presidential election since the first Obama administration. He goes to such an extreme as to suggest moral equivalence between the political assassination of an American Democrat with Bonhoeffer’s involvement in a plot to kill Hitler.

Metaxas’ delusionally dangerous portrayal prompted 86 members of the Bonhoeffer family to release a public letter on Oct. 18 condemning the distortions and misuse of “right-wing extremists, xenophobes and religious agitators … whose intentions are diametrically opposed to Bonhoeffer’s thoughts and actions; ranging from Project 2025 — the Heritage Foundation’s proposed program for Trump — to the German right-wing extremist Björn Höcke.”

How should we responsibly position Bonhoeffer within the current American political scene? A good place to start might be to ask how he actually voted.

In the only free election in which he participated, Bonhoeffer supported the Catholic Center Party, which drew its membership from aristocrats, priests, bourgeoisie, peasants, workers. It was the only party that had half a chance of defeating Hitler, Bonhoeffer believed, with its Vatican ties purportedly offering some buffer from full state control. Though Roman Catholic, the Center Party became a reliable inter-confessional partner in the various Weimar coalitions of the 1920s. It supported the separation of church and state and welfare capitalism, views that would not find a welcome reception with the Christian right in the United States. 

Bonhoeffer was proven naïve, of course; when the Nazis came to power in 1933, the Center Party signed the Enabling Act, empowering Hitler “to assume dictatorial powers in Germany” and dissolve every party competing with his own.

Further insight into Bonhoeffer’s political leanings comes from his experience in the United States as a young theologian. While studying with Reinhold Niebuhr at Union Theological Seminary in Manhattan in 1930 and 1931, Bonhoeffer encountered the American organizing tradition and its innovations in social ministry. Though initially vexed by American seminarians’ casual disregard for the doctrinal debates of the Protestant Reformation, he was won over by the robust social engagement of Union’s professors, students and clergy.

In field trips with classmates, Bonhoeffer met with representatives of the National Women’s Trade Union League, the NAACP and the Workers’ Education Bureau of America. And, as he wrote to his pastoral supervisor in Berlin, “I visited housing settlements, Y.M. home missions, co-operative houses, playgrounds, children’s courts, night schools, socialist schools, asylums, (and) youth organizations.”

It is the signal virtue of the new biopic, “Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Spy, Assassin,” released last month to strong box office numbers, to portray with remarkable ardor his encounters with American religion and society, especially his deep immersion in African American Christianity and culture. Bonhoeffer said he “heard the Gospel preached in the Negro churches,” and it sounded refreshingly different from the somber Lutheranism of the north German plains. He encountered the “Jesus of the disinherited,” to cite the Black Christian mystic and pastor, Howard Thurman.

Bonhoeffer would later say that these spaces of social hope existing in and beyond parish churches’ walls enabled a “turning from the phraseological to the real.” In one largely forgotten episode of his American year, Bonhoeffer took a road trip from New York to Mexico City through the Jim Crow South. He drove through Alabama the same month nine young black men, who had been falsely accused of raping white women, were convicted in a mob atmosphere in successive trials in Scottsboro, Alabama. “Blood laws, mob rule, sterilizations, and land seizures,” he wrote in his notes.

Returning to Berlin in the summer of 1931, Bonhoeffer told his atheist older brother, Karl-Friedrich, that Germany would need an ACLU of its own: The rights of conscientious objectors, protections for resident aliens from deportation and racial disenfranchisement mattered deeply. After denouncing the German church’s support of the Aryan Clause in 1933, Bonhoeffer’s life was set on a collision course with Hitler.

Perhaps what makes it so difficult to understand Bonhoeffer is that we do not often see Christians combine social idealism, pro-life ethics and fervent devotion to Jesus Christ. But these dissidents, dreamers and peacemakers who cut against the grain of the principalities and powers are out there. I am thinking of those Americans who people the faith-based reformist tradition hymned in two recent volumes from the Project on Lived Theology, the research community I am affiliated with at the University of Virginia: ordinary saints such as Ella Baker, Dorothy Day, Cesar Chavez, Mary Paik Lee, Florence Jordan, Sarah Patton Boyle and Ramon Dagoberto Quiñones.

The testimonies of these people are not readily reduced to sound bites, yet this is precisely the form that marks Bonhoeffer’s distinctive witness — a form without any natural partisan home.

Bonhoeffer’s response to our situation would begin with bold, straightforward questions such as those that animate his letters and papers written from a Gestapo prison in the months preceding his death: “Who is Christ for us today?” “Are we still of any use?” “How can Christ become Lord of the religious?” “Why are ‘good people’ often more inclined toward ‘ultimate honesty’ and ‘righteous action’ than church people?” What does God desire but for all humanity to show mercy and act justly?

Bonhoeffer prayed there would arise a generation of “responsible thinking people” with the strength to stand fast, exemplify civil courage and cleave to honesty. He asked whether the “time of words is over,” whether religious language has been so thoroughly profaned that the only way forward is through “prayer and righteous action.”

Bonhoeffer matters because he reminds us that Christian behavior and attitudes are more than calculations for a partisan edge. He understood that a true disciple is “clothed not in the adornments of nationhood and race,” but in the excellences of Christ. Faith ought never divide the self into two halves, he said. “For it is only when one loves life and the earth so much that without them everything seems to be over that one may believe in the resurrection and a new world.”

(Charles Marsh teaches in the religious studies department at the University of Virginia and directs the Project on Lived Theology. He is the author of the award-winning biography “Strange Glory: A Life of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.” The views expressed in this commentary do not necessarily reflect those of Religion News Service.)

President-Elect Donald Trump at the Elysee Palace on Dec. 7, 2024, in Paris. / Credit: Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images

CNA Staff, Dec 9, 2024 / 17:00 pm (CNA).

In his first sit-down broadcast network interview since the election, President-elect Donald Trump said that in his first 100 days in office, he would focus on immigration as well as enacting tax cuts and tariffs.

During the interview on NBC News’ “Meet the Press” Sunday, the president-elect reaffirmed his support of in vitro fertilization (IVF), a fertility procedure opposed by the Catholic Church because it destroys embryonic life and separates conception from marriage. Trump also said he would “probably” not restrict the abortion pill, though he refused to commit to that, noting that “things do change.” 

Immigration 

Trump pledged that the first thing he would do is address the border issue, beginning with criminals who are in the U.S. illegally. He told NBC he would begin “rapidly” with criminals who are here illegally such as Venezuelan gang members and MS-13.

“We’re starting with the criminals, and we gotta do it,” he said. “And then we’re starting with others and we’re going to see how it goes.” 

When asked about deporting everyone who has been living in the country illegally for years, he said: “Well, I think you have to do it.”

“It’s a very tough thing to do, but you have to have rules, regulations, laws; they came in illegally,” Trump said. 

He noted that this is unfair for people waiting to come into the country legally. 

“We’re going to make it very easy for people to come in, in terms of, they have to pass the test,” Trump said. “They have to be able to tell you what the Statue of Liberty is. They have to tell you a little bit about our country. They have to love our country.”

When asked about families with mixed immigration status, Trump said he wouldn’t split up families, saying the families could be deported together if they choose.

“I don’t want to be breaking up families, so the only way you don’t break up the family is you keep them together and you have to send them all back,” he said. 

“We have to do our job,” Trump continued. “You have to have a series of standards and a series of laws.” 

Trump also pledged to end birthright citizenship for children of immigrants.

When asked whether his plan violates the 14th Amendment’s guarantee that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside,” Trump said that he may have to turn to “the people,” but “we have to end it.” 

Trump also pledged to “work with the Democrats on a plan” to help Dreamers (immigrants who came into the country illegally as children) stay in the country, noting that Republicans are “very open” to doing so.

The U.S. bishops in November urged the American government to reform the immigration system with “fair and humane treatment” of immigrants. The statement called for a system that “provides permanent relief for childhood arrivals, helps families stay together, and welcomes refugees,” while also “keep[ing] our borders safe and secure.” 

In vitro fertilization

During his campaign, Trump promised free in vitro fertilization (IVF), either through the government or insurance mandates. In the interview, Trump reaffirmed his support for the treatment, calling himself “the father of IVF in a certain way.”

Trump cited his involvement in the Alabama IVF controversy earlier this year in which he voiced support for IVF. After the Alabama Supreme Court ruled in February that frozen human embryos constitute children under state statute, the Republican governor of Alabama, Kay Ivey, signed legislation granting clinics immunity when they “damage” or cause the “death” of human embryonic life in the process of providing in vitro fertilization (IVF) fertility treatments to women.

Trump noted that in response to the court decision he issued “a statement from the Republican party that we are all for IVF.” 

“The Alabama Legislature met the following day and passed it,” he said. “It was a beautiful thing to see.” 

But when asked where IVF was on his list of priorities, Trump noted that “we have a lot of other things.”  

“We’re going to be talking about it,” he said of IVF. “We’ll be submitting in either the first or second package to Congress the extension of the tax cuts. So that might very well be in there, or it’ll come sometime after that.” 

The Catholic Church has long opposed IVF as “morally unacceptable” because of the rejection of the natural procreative act of husband and wife, the commodification of the human child, and the destruction of embryonic human life, which is very common in the procedure. 

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that though “research aimed at reducing human sterility is to be encouraged” (No. 2375), practices such as IVF “disassociate the sexual act from the procreative act” and the act “entrusts the life and identity of the embryo into the power of doctors and biologists” (No. 2377). 

Abortion pills 

Trump reaffirmed that he would not restrict abortion pills, though he refused to commit to the position, noting that things sometimes change.

When asked if he would restrict abortion pills, Trump said: “I’ll probably stay with exactly what I’ve been saying for the last two years, and the answer is no.” 

When asked if he committed to that statement, Trump noted that “things do change, but I don’t think it’s going to change at all.” 

Medical or chemical abortions — abortions procured via a two-pill regimen — made up 70% of abortions in the U.S. in 2022, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 

During the presidential campaign, Trump was criticized by pro-life advocates for his position that abortion law should be left for the states to decide. In June he said he agreed with the Supreme Court’s ruling on the abortion pill saying: “I agree with their decision to have done that, and I will not block it.”

The Catholic Church teaches that abortion is “gravely contrary to the moral law” and that “life must be protected with the utmost care from the moment of conception” (CCC, No. 2271). 

Transform your Bible experience with a guided tour through both Old and New Testaments with 77 Jesus’ Witness Ciphers.

A new version Nov 2024 Expanded Edition II completes 77 Jesus’ Witness Ciphers with detail commentaries.

Transform your Bible experience with a guided tour through both Old and New Testaments with 77 Jesus’ Witness Ciphers.   

The FTV Bible is classified as a study Bible that reveals a timeless phenomenon for deciphering Bible text. It teaches one how to See and visually perceive Scripture through the Cross, which this FTV Bible requires 1,410 times with the word behold. This new vision generates a new and more complete understanding of Scripture with some unique results—the feminine attributes of God, and the consistency of salvation through the Discipline of the Cross.

The Feminine Translation Bible has a study section containing “Jesus’ Witness Cipher” that deciphers and translates Bible text. After reading 77 ciphers it proves to me that man did not write the Bible. Only God could have orchestrated this timeless phenomenon, even with 40 different human writers over 6000 human years. James Krustallos, Author of “Proof.”

“YHWH,” is the sacred 4-letter name for the God of Israel in Hebrew pronounced Yahweh, who introduced Himself to Moses in Exodus through the cross. YHWH is the divine foundation of the Discipline of the Cross written 6,876 times in this Bible. The Cross of YHWH consists of four Hebrew letters Yad, Hey, Waw, and Hey, and is known as the Tetragrammaton. The phrase, I-Am-YHWH-your God, forms a cross that is written in this Bible 47 times. The double word YHWH God appears 43 times in this Bible. (Cipher 11) And God said, YHWH: this is my name forever.

Historically, after the Babylonian Exile, the Jews stopped pronouncing the divine name YHWH, because they considered it too sacred to be spoken. They substituted the Hebrew title of Adonai meaning “My Lord” in the English side of their TANAKH. But the Jews did not change their sacred four-letter name for God in Hebrew. In this Bible God never explicitly commanded man not to speak His name in the Bible.

Consequently, a language bias was created in non-Hebrew language Bibles that concealed YHWH’s four attributes from eyesight, and prevented people from hearing YHWH vocalized. This language bias conflicts with Scripture, where the people of Israel must see with their eyes and hear with their ears to perceive and understand Scripture in order to be healed by God. (Isaiah 6:9-10) This language bias even conflicts with God’s Third Commandment.

If one is not a believer in the name of YHWH God, do not be troubled, since a wineskin size 3 will fit into an original, larger wineskin size 4 that includes the divinity of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. (Cipher 3, 63)

Instantly see how the Word of God and Jesus’ Witness Cipher are synonymous. See that both witness the light as will be seen below from the light of the feminine Holy Spirit. (Cipher 41)

The new Study Section removes feminine bias with explanations about the dual feminine natures of YHWH God.

Discover why the Holy Spirit is interpreted to be feminine in this Bible, because the Holy Spirit gender varies grammatically according to the language used. Since the word “Spirit” in the Semitic languages, such as Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac, is feminine, the Spirit in this holy Bible is interpreted to be feminine.

See how the Old Testament female dove received by the savior of mortal life, Noah, prophecies the New Testament Holy Spirit descended in a bodily form, as a dove, upon him. See how Jesus’ baptism begins a picture-story in the New Testament about a Holy Spirit Mother in bodily form as a dove. She is white, because She is the Light who God created in the beginning. She is spiritual light, because She was before the light of the sun, moon and stars in the Creation. She is Holy Spiritual Light, because God called Her good. She is the Holy Spirit of God with feminine wisdom explained in Proverbs 8. She is She, because She is the heavenly Mother of the Son of God.

“I have felt this in my soul for the longest time and couldn’t find anything to substantiate these very deep and intense feelings I have regarding the Holy Mother. Thank you for doing this, for providing all of these truths. I’ve never agreed with something so much to my very core as I have with this!!” Shannon

Transend into Her Light to See how the heavenly Most High Mother of the Son of God is also Mother of the Sons of the Light that unlocks the secret key to the predestined elect.

Instantly learn how the second rebirth in the spirit with the Holy Spirit is possible only with the feminine Holy Spirit Mother, since the gender of the spirit in the human is masculine, like the male ram in Abraham’s 666 covenant with God. (Cipher 5)

Learn how God prefers the second born, if even Isaac over Ishmael, Jacob over Esau, Joseph over Reuben and Ephraim over Manasseh, or even Enosh second born from Seth.

See how Jesus taught the Cipher of the Good Tree Mat 7:15-21 that the one with a first rebirth in water will call Jesus Lord, Lord. But the one with also a second rebirth in the ram’s male spirit with the Holy Spirit Mother of Light can yield a good tree (cross) with good fruit, and as a Son of Light, enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. (Ciphers 33, 34, 42)

Learn of the importance of Holy Spirit motherhood. To deny motherhood to the Most-High Holy Spirit of Light, heavenly Mother of the Son of God, could be considered blasphemy that is most likely to cause the wrath of God of both genders. (Cipher 75) Jesus spoke to his audiences in Aramaic, wherein the Spirit is feminine, when he proclaimed in four gospels that any blasphemy against the Holy Spirit would never be forgiven in this age or the next.

Read more about the feminine gender of the Holy Spirit in Sample Pages of the printed Bible subjects: About the Holy Spirit, Two Mothers, Lady Wisdom, Female Dove, The most High, Male and Female God, Mother of the Light, Second Born with the Holy Spirit, and Holy Spirit Blasphemy.

The Holy Bible Feminine Translation Version is the result of interpreting and translating the Bible through the Discipline of the Cross, which begins with the first verse in the Bible. In the beginning—God created—the heavens— and the earth. (Gen 1:1)

God is a God of “patterns”; they are a part of His signature for His creation…This book answers the question, what was God’s hidden “pattern” for His Son’s cross?…JW Farquhar meticulously uncovers, thus revealing God’s “Pattern-of-the-Cross”…James Krustallos, Author of “Proof Unveiled.”

Through the Discipline of the Cross see how the mother of all living humans (Gen 3:20) is also the mother of the elect: first Seth and then Enosh, who both appear in the beginning of Jesus genealogy, as well as all the elect Patriarchs that complete the genealogy.

See when Jesus returns in the clouds, how he calls the elect through the cross. (Cipher 36)

Learn also that All living humans are translated to be children of our Father God through His daughter Eve, the first mother on earth from whom we are all natural descendants on the foot of the Tree of All Living cross. (Cipher 3)

Behold the dimensioned Fullness of God’s Family and Form Cross—Daughter, Son, Mother, Father. (Cipher 62)

See the daughter as mother of all living flesh on the foot of the Cross of YHWH God of All Flesh. (Cipher 27)

Learn how baptism through the Discipline of the Cross is, rather than a partial verse, an authoritative Cross formed with the complete verse of Mat 28:19 with all nations on the foot.

See how the previous verse assigns Jesus’ authority, where all nations on the foot of the cross are replaced by each person’s name, one by one, that generates a personal cross that Jesus demands one to take up. It was not a suggestion. Otherwise, one would not be worthy of him, and one could not be his disciple. (Cipher 35)

See how to take up one’s personal cross daily with the Lord’s Prayer. (Cipher 32)

Behold a walking, talking formula—the ONLY path to salvation: (Cipher 48)
               A walking talking Cross, 1-2-3 plus four,
       said; I am—the way—the truth—and life evermore.
                  The only formula, for salvation to be,
       said; No one comes to the Father, except through me.

The Discipline of Bible Numbers: Numbers don’t lie because numbers cannot, especially the holy numbers of God.

JW Farquhar’s writings have been the catalyst to my spiritual journey to the truth, that awakened a love for math and numbers I never knew I had. I remember crying out to Father Mother God for truth because I kept seeing things in scripture that contradicted what I thought I knew. Michelle Donor author of “Pearls of Wisdom and Power”, Jan 2023, “The Blackness in Me: Poetic Lessons of Life” Barnes & Noble 2022, and “She Her Hers: Inspiration for the Enlightened Women’s Soul”, Amazon, Apr 2021.

See how Bible math through summation generates and validates the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the number of humankind, the number of YHWH, the number of Joseph, the number of the 11^th day and even the number of fish caught in the net after Jesus told them where to drop it in Sample Pages.

Transform your Bible experience when you see how to transform your numbers from 666 to 777 that the numbers of science validate.

See how the Creation’s Cross numbered 77 77 77 77 begins the Bible, and repeats 15 times in the OT to prophesy the cross numbered 77 77 77 77 of Jesus Christ Genealogy that begins the New Testament.

See how Joseph’s spiritual Generations of 77 77 77 77 on the cross are Jesus’ Generations through his Genealogy Cross. (Cipher’s 7, 31) 

See the numbers 77 77 77 77 on the cross empower and validate the consistency of Israel’s holy rituals including the 40 years of manna in the wilderness at evening and morning, Sabbath Day and Continual lamb sacrifices, the Day of Atonement, the Feast of Tabernacles, The Purification of the Leper, and the Red Heifer, and the annual rituals where all lead to and prophesy the same numbers on the cross of their Messiah.

See the revelation of God’s wrath expressed through 77 77 77 77 on the cross. (Cipher 75)

Behold Date 666, and the 6 men with slaughter weapons, and all those who are killed, and all those who are spared with the mark of the cross on their foreheads, and their entry into the Kingdom of God. (Cipher 77)

Take a free online tour of the Bible guided by Jesus’ Witness Cipher and then with the biblical number 40 of fulfillment……

Buy the paperback Holy Bible Feminine Translation Version

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Contact:
JW Farquhar
Mark 7 Publishing
8035170451
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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of RNS or Religion News Foundation.