Ten Things That Caught My Eye: Rescuing Ukrainian Children from Russia, On Impatience, and More

1. AEI’s Robert Doar talks with Mary Eberstadt about her new book Adam and Eve after the Pill, Revisited

2. Behind enemy lines: Inside the operation to rescue Ukraine’s abducted children 

Galkina’s story offers a glimpse at one of the horrors of the Ukrainian war: The forced transfer of thousands of children from Ukraine to Russia or Russian-occupied territories. While the exact numbers involved remain uncertain, according to the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the Ukrainian government has identified more than 19,000 children it says were deported to Russia. Liza is one of just 371 children that organizations like Save Ukraine and Ukraine’s Ombudsman’s Office have managed to rescue.

Russia acknowledges it has transferred children from Ukraine, arguing it is saving them from the horrors of war or facilitating the adoption or fostering of orphans. But the OSCE has documented nonconsensual evacuations it says amount to war crimes, and the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague has issued arrest warrants for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova, for their role in what the court says is an ongoing war crime.

“Whatever the form of placement, Ukrainian children find themselves in an entirely Russian environment, including language, customs and religion and are exposed to [a] pro-Russian information campaign often amounting to targeted re-education as well as being involved in military education,” the OSCE said in a recent report. “The Russian Federation does not take any steps to actively promote the return of Ukrainian children. Rather, it creates various obstacles for families seeking to get their children back.”

Which is exactly what Galkina discovered after her daughter was abducted from the Ukrainian city of Kherson.

3. Faydra Shapiro in the Times of Israel: Christians in Israel: Our Moral Obligation

Why shouldn’t Jews spit on, harass, curse, frighten, and vandalize Christians and their holy sites? We must be wary of an answer that instrumentalizes Christians, dividing them into “good” and “bad” based on political views. Because let’s face it: if we can manage to live with strident disagreement about fundamental religious beliefs, we should be able to live also with disagreement about the state of Israel. The argument that “good” Christians are our friends and deserve protection and basic rights is a dangerous one. Christians deserve equal protections and basic rights because they are people, made in the image of God. They are a vibrant part of the fabric of life in Israel, our neighbors, fellow citizens and children of God.

Two rabbis, thank G-d, not only see this but have clearly and openly condemned these all-too-common attacks by Jews against Christians. Recently, both the Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rav David Lau, and the former Sepharadi Chief Rabbi of Israel and presently Chief Rabbi of Jersualem, Rav Shlomo Amar both wrote strong and courageous letters in this precise vein. They offer a truly Jewish response, one that speaks from our spiritual sources, not our political strivings. They present clear religious condemnation without a hint of equivocation. They remind us that the peace we all pray for will be made with people who are different, people with whom we disagree.

Jews have suffered greatly under Christian power over the last 2000 years. We Jews who are justifiably and necessarily sensitive to the antisemitism that makes us remove our kippot or hide our star of David necklaces in Europe must not remain silent when Christians need to do the same in Israel out of fear. Fear from us.

4. California State Senator Warns Parents to Flee State Amid LGBTQ+ Laws

5. From Becket: Minnesota pauses attack on faith-based education

State will not exclude faith-based schools from high school college credit program during litigation

6. Woman charged with vandalizing Miami Catholic church, desecrating altar

A woman has been arrested and charged after she allegedly vandalized St. Timothy Catholic Church in Miami in an attack Saturday, June 10, that police say was motivated by religious prejudice.

According to Miami-Dade Police, Alfa Illescas, 44, was caught on security cameras spray-painting the words “perverts,” “pigs,” “liars,” and an upside-down cross on the church wall, a sign, and columns within the courtyard of the church’s school.

The footage also shows Illescas kicking over trash bins, approaching an altar of the Virgin Mary, and spray-painting a security camera facing the altar, police said.

After investigating further, police discovered that Illescas “pushed” and broke parts of another altar in front of the church.

7. Father Raymond J. de Souza: Why the LA Dodgers Chose Anti-Catholicism

Baseball provided another marker of cultural decay twenty-five years ago. In 1998, all 30 major league clubs played on Good Friday. Cardinal John O’Connor was enraged that the sacred hours of the Lord’s Passion would be observed in recreation.

“I believe that playing on Good Friday, at the very least from 12 to 3, is cheap and cheapens our culture, no matter how big the box-office receipts,” O’Connor wrote. “I resent it. I protest it. I will not go to a game in 1998.”

It was a personal protest, not a call for a boycott, and it came with a price for New York’s archbishop. The Yankees won the World Series that year.

This year several teams had their home openers on Good Friday. In Cleveland, some asked whether the local bishop would grant a dispensation so that those attending could have hot dogs.

“We wish the Cleveland Guardians a very successful home opener on Friday, April 7,” wrote Bishop Edward C. Malesic. “We cannot grant a dispensation to the practice of abstaining from meat for Catholics attending the baseball game on this most holy Friday of Lent.”

Good Friday is not in Lent, but leave that embarrassing error aside. It’s a long way down from 1998 to 2023. Cardinal O’Connor did not wish that the Yankees would play well; he told them that they should be ashamed for playing at all. In Cleveland, Catholics are just asked to eat popcorn and crackerjack.

8. Roger Byron: Overturning Hill v. Colorado: Time to restore pro-life speech

For years now — a lot of years — the Supreme Court has relegated to second-class status, at best, the speech rights of those who oppose abortion. The court’s practice of jettisoning legal rules and doctrines to safeguard that infamous procedure has been so prevalent that Justice Scalia gave it a name: the “ad hoc nullification machine.”

The poster child for the machine’s distortion of basic free speech doctrine is Hill v. Colorado, which the court handed down in 2000.

At issue in Hill was a Colorado law that makes it a crime to be within 100 feet of the door of an abortion center and then get within 8 feet of another person to hand her a pamphlet that tells how she could get help. Or to offer her more information about the procedure she is considering. Or to tell her about abortion alternatives if she’d like to hear them.

The only escape is to somehow get the woman’s permission before getting close enough to talk to her (i.e., within 8 feet) on a noisy street or sidewalk. That’s like saying you can use sign language, but you have to put your hands behind your back.

The law is absurd and contravenes basic free speech doctrine. It would never have survived if it hindered climate change advocates or a labor union demonstration outside a manufacturing plant. In Hill, however, the ad hoc nullification machine was well oiled and in good working order, and the court upheld the law as perfectly fine under the First Amendment.

. . .

The First Liberty Institute has filed a federal lawsuit to overturn Hill and have this Colorado law and a similar Denver ordinance struck down as unconstitutional.

We filed the suit on behalf of Wendy Faustin, a mother of eight and now a grandmother, who firmly believes that abortion is a terrible moral wrong. She has spent many years of her life compassionately and lovingly trying to persuade women to choose an alternative to abortion.

She does this with gentle, one-on-one conversations as a sidewalk counselor at the only place and time she realistically can: outside abortion centers as women enter them to consider or obtain an abortion.

9. Dr. Tod Worner (note: He’s really a doctor): 

Truth takes time, but we don’t like that. We want our answers now. Served up piping hot. Chop-chop. But by instantly obliterating the chasm between our curiosity and our apprehension, we may not grow. Where there is no struggle to define terms, no wrestling for clarity, no consideration (much less re-consideration) of why our question even matters in the grander scheme, no fundamental waiting just so that things can simmer, we grow intellectually (and, at times, spiritually) flabby. In Dante’s Divine Comedy, even at the base of the formidable Mt. Purgatory, the august poet Virgil implores strangers to share the secret of how to move expeditiously from Purgatory’s interminable antechamber. “For who knows most,” Virgil taps his foot, “him loss of time most grieves.”

10. Naomi Schaefer Riley and James Piereson on Philanthropy and Pluralism

Foundations are having to fend off pressures to conform to the new philanthropic orthodoxies on race and identity issues.