Tag: religion

DEA Exemption Process For Religious Psychedelics Use Needs Clearer Timelines And Standards, Government Watchdog Agency Says

A federal government watchdog agency says in a new report that the Drug Enforcement Administration should improve the process through which it considers granting religious exemptions for psilocybin and other controlled substances, asserting that the existing route lacks clarity on timing, evaluation and other matters.

The 80-page report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) notes that although psilocybin remains a Schedule I controlled substance under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), people may petition DEA for exemptions to use it—or other controlled substances—for religious purposes.

“DEA has established a process for these petitions, but its guidance doesn’t set clear timeframes for the decision-making,” it continues. “Exemption petitions have taken from 8 months to over 3 years to be resolved.”

GAO focused specifically on psilocybin use under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), which is meant to protect religious practices from undue government burdens. The agency found that the DEA exemption procedure itself was burdensome.

“Selected stakeholders reported several barriers to the legal access and use of psilocybin for religious practices under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act,” GAO says. “For example, DEA established a process for parties to petition for a religious exemption from the Controlled Substances Act to use controlled substances for religious purposes. However, DEA’s guidance does not inform petitioners on its timeframes to make determinations on completed petitions.”

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Trans school shooter Audrey Hale shared fantasies of killing family, children with therapist who failed to report ideation to law enforcement: report

A new report revealed that the psychologist who was reportedly part of the care team for trans Covenant School shooter Audrey Elizabeth Hale allegedly failed in her professional and legal duty to warn law enforcement that Hale expressed fantasies about murdering family members and carrying out a school shooting.

According to 99.7 WTN’s Brian Wilson, “The ongoing [MNPD] investigation apparently focuses on the shooter’s therapist.” He added, “Metro Nashville Police Department is remaining silent on this, but sources familiar with the investigation confirm that the search warrants were run on the home and office of the therapist in an effort to obtain notes of the therapy sessions with the Covenant School Shooter. One source says detectives have evidence that the shooter told the therapist about fantasies that involved, among other things, killing her parents and carrying out a school shooting of some kind.”

Retired MNPD officer Garet Davidson told Wilson, “I know there has been a search warrant served. One of the practitioner’s offices, I think home as well, regarding some documentation.” Davidson added, “I’m a little skeptical that it’s [the MNPD investigation into the Covenant killing] active, open, and actually being worked. And I don’t know, if it was, why it hasn’t already been presented to DA Funk to go ahead and see about an indictment on that individual in question.”

A source gave the name of the psychologist to The Tennesse Star, but the outlet is withholding it for privacy reasons. However, the outlet confirmed that the psychologist in question was previously licensed in Tennessee from August 1986 until December 1, 2022, has a PhD from George Peabody College, which is part of Vanderbilt University, and had no history of disciplinary action or professional complaints during her almost 40 years in the field.

The Starreported that the psychologist is now claiming that she closed her practice on December 31, 2022, before Hale’s shooting at the Covenant School on March 27, 2023. The outlet reported that a search warrant was served and executed on the psychologist’s Nashville office in July 2023 and that documents found during the search revealed that Hale told the psychologist during treatment that she fantasized about killing her family and committing a school shooting.

According to the outlet, the psychologist could face criminal charges or be subject to civil claims for violating Tennessee Code Annotated (TCA) 33-3-206, which makes any “mental health professional or behavior analyst” a mandatory reporter stating that a “service recipient has communicated to a mental health professional or behavior analyst an actual threat of bodily harm against a clearly identified victim” and “has determined or reasonably should have determined that the service recipient has the apparent ability to commit such an act and is likely to carry out the threat unless prevented from doing so,” the mental health provider “shall take reasonable care to predict, warn of, or take precautions to protect the identified victim from the service recipient’s violent behavior.”

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UK’s top UFO expert shares one major fallout from finding aliens

The discovery of alien life could turbocharge religious division and hatred, the UK’s leading UFO expert has warned.

Nick Pope, who investigated unidentified flying objects (UFOs) for the Ministry of Defence (MoD), warned of the fallout days after it was revealed that the UK government is investigating how it would reveal the discovery of extraterrestrial life to the public.

Speaking to Metro.co.uk, Mr Pope said the discovery of aliens could also reignite centuries-old tensions between science and religion.

‘The religious implications of finding alien life will be particularly tricky,’ he said. ‘History shows that the relationship between science and religion has always been difficult, and that differences in religious beliefs fuel divisions and hatreds that we see in the world today. 

‘Throwing alien life into this already volatile situation could be explosive. 

‘Some religious scholars have considered the theological implications of extraterrestrial life, but we won’t really know how this will play out until the rubber hits the road.’

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Canadian measure would remove free speech protection for quoting Bible, sacred texts

Legislation introduced in Canada’s Parliament would eliminate the use of “belief in a religious text” as a defense against hate crime charges.

Repealing the exemption in Canada’s criminal code could criminalize sermons and messages using the Bible or other religious texts as the basis for critiquing other religions or addressing issues such as transgender rights, critics warn.

Yves-Francois Blanchet, leader of the minority Bloc Quebecois party, submitted the “private member’s bill” — defined as a measure not sponsored by a Cabinet minister or parliamentary secretary — in November and again last month. The measure received an initial reading in the lower chamber, but no action has followed.

Mr. Blanchet said when he introduced the bill that its purpose is to allow authorities to prosecute antisemitic speech. The measure is needed to “refrain from giving inappropriate and undue privileges to people within a society who use them to disturb the peace and harmony, especially if those privileges enable people to sow hatred or wish death upon others based on a belief in some divine power,” he told Parliament.

Two-thirds of Canadians surveyed Feb. 16-18 by the polling firm Leger said they support the measure.

But Jeff King, president of the Washington-based International Christian Concern, said Thursday the proposal is “designed to silence” people whose opinions differ from prevailing thought.

“We cannot urge direct violence against somebody,” he said, “but free speech means we all have very different opinions in a democracy [and] we’re supposed to have vigorous debates.”

He said the legislation could open the door to prosecuting anybody expressing sincere beliefs based on their religion’s sacred texts.

Under the proposal, he said, “you can’t say the Bible says so-and-so, or you could be arrested to be charged, you can be fined.” Despite labels, Mr. King said, “this [measure] has nothing to do” with combating antisemitism.

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Parade of Pharisees: It’s Time to Separate Piety And Politics

Piety with a side of eggs

One of the most brazen if not most shameless “free exercise thereof” examples is the annual National Prayer Breakfast. Politicians gather to silently pray that the Lord will smite all their enemies — or at least get them indicted on multiple charges. And the common theme of comments at the event is that the political class is doing God’s work.

The prayer breakfast long ago turned into the type of “market” that Jesus castigated thousands of years ago. The prayer breakfast became notorious as “an international influence-peddling bazaar, where foreign dignitaries, religious leaders, diplomats and lobbyists jockey for access to the highest reaches of American power,” the New York Times reported. Maria Butina, who the media labeled as a Russian spy because she failed to register as a Russian agent, used the breakfast as a way “to establish a back channel of communication” with America’s top political leaders, according to a 2018 federal indictment. Franklin Graham described the prevailing motive at prayer breakfasts in 2018: “I can tell you right now, everybody in that room has the same agenda. They’re wanting to be able to rub elbows with somebody that they normally couldn’t rub elbows with.”

Controversy over the foreign spying spurred a newly formed organization to take over the prayer breakfast gig. It issued a revised mission statement: “The vision of the National Prayer Breakfast Foundation is to promote and share the idea of gathering together in the Spirit of Jesus of Nazareth,” with participants “united in believing that by looking to the life of Jesus, people of diverse backgrounds and beliefs can join together, encourage and promote forgiveness and reconciliation.”

Politicians joyfully join together to con the rubes — to keep average Americans paying and obeying Uncle Sam. The national Prayer Breakfast is a keystone of civic religion in the nation’s capital. That religion is devoted to worshiping the government and pretending that federal agencies can perform miracles, regardless of their past records.

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Prominent Islam Critic Wounded During Brutal Stabbing Rampage in Germany

Multiple people were seriously injured when a knife-wielding suspect ambushed a prominent critic of Islam during a public event in Germany on Friday, according to reports.

The shocking incident unfolded at around 11:30 a.m. local time in Mannheim, a city in the state of Baden-Württemberg.

Michael Stürzenberger, a well-known political figure and opponent of the Islamization of Europe, was preparing for an event in the city’s central square when a crazed man brandishing a large blade launched a brutal stabbing rampage.

The entire episode was caught on camera by a member of Stürzenberger’s team who was live-streaming at the time.

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‘Indefensible’: Courts finally scrutinize COVID vaccine mandates as religious infringement

Three years after COVID-19 vaccines became widely available to adults – at which point the CDC already knew they couldn’t stop transmission – courts are finally starting to put their foot down on the most basic legal question: Are mandates at least applied fairly, if not scientifically?

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals not only knocked down the University of Colorado medical school’s original and revised 2021 mandates for discriminating against employees seeking religious exemptions, but knocked the trial judge for “abuse of discretion” by reversing the burden of proof to moot the case.

The Anschutz campus, whose dental school recently created a diversity, equity and inclusion award, made an early pivotal decision on COVID vaccine mandates by scrutinizing the content as well as sincerity of beliefs among employees and students seeking exemptions.

“The Administration’s September 1 Policy is not neutral on its face; the September 24 Policy is not neutral in practice; and both substantially burden” the religious exercise of the anonymous 11 female and six male plaintiffs, according to the majority opinion by Judge Allison Eid, who replaced Neil Gorsuch when President Trump appointed him to the Supreme Court.

“It is manifestly unreasonable to think” the Sept. 24 policy “would reach precisely the same results … by accident,” Eid wrote. “The Administration had spent weeks or months drafting and implementing a policy hostile toward and discriminatory against certain religions, only to adopt a new, purportedly neutral policy that reached precisely the same results.”

University of California San Francisco epidemiologist Vinay Prasad celebrated the ruling for recognizing CU Anschutz administrators “set an indefensible policy,” while the plaintiffs’ lawyers at the Thomas More Society thanked the court for recognizing the university’s “value judgments … reeked of religious bigotry” and violated constitutional rights and “basic decency.”

The ruling is reminiscent of the Supreme Court’s narrow finding against the Colorado Civil Rights Commission for “official expressions of hostility to religion” when it punished Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips for declining to make custom wedding cakes for gay couples based on his Christian view of marriage.

In the private sector, a high-profile vaccine mandate lawsuit by an actor fired from the Fox show “911” is heading to trial over whether Disney-owned 20th Television trampled Rockmond Dunbar’s views as a follower of the Church of Universal Wisdom, which The New York Times profiled in 2003 for its utility in circumventing childhood vaccination mandates.

“It appears that Disney vetted exemption applications on a case-by-case basis, investigating whether the religions constituted true religious institutions and whether applicants actually followed the beliefs,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.

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THE VATICAN HAS UPDATED ITS GUIDELINES FOR EVALUATING APPARITIONS AND SUPERNATURAL PHENOMENA. HERE’S WHAT THAT MEANS.

The Vatican has updated its process for evaluating visions of the Virgin Mary and other alleged supernatural phenomena in a new effort to prevent abuses and modernize its approaches amid the proliferation of digital technologies.

The announcement, made during a press conference in Rome last week, represents the first update to the Vatican’s procedures since 1978 and highlights growing concerns about the exploitation of people’s beliefs using technology. However, the new guidelines presented on Friday emphasize caution against making definitive declarations that discount such phenomena unless clear indications of fabrication can be discerned.

The revised norms presented on Friday focus on the moral issues involved in the exploitation of people’s faith through the presentation of alleged supernatural experiences, which can be punishable under canonical law.

Traditionally, the Catholic Church has investigated claims involving various forms of supernatural phenomena, some of which have historically impacted the faith. Among the most famous examples include a series of purported Marian apparitions witnessed by three shepherd children at the Cova da Iria in Fátima, Portugal, in 1917.

Decades later, a group of six children in Medjugorje, Bosnia and Herzegovina, claimed to have also seen and communicated with the Virgin Mary over several days in the summer of 1981, during a series of apparitional visions in which she purportedly appeared with the Infant Christ in her arms.

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University of Colorado Vaccine Mandate “Motivated by Religious Animus” and “Unconstitutional”

The United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit issued a ruling that the University of Colorado Anschutz School Medicine’s refusal to allow religious exemptions to its COVID-19 vaccine mandate was “motivated by religious animus” and unconstitutional under the First Amendment’s Religious Clauses.

The Court ruled that the University’s vaccine mandates granted “exemptions for some religions, but not others, because of differences in their religious doctrines” and granted “secular exemptions on more favorable terms than religious exemptions.” Both of these things were illegal.

The Court reaffirmed the First Amendment principle that government cannot test the sincerity of employees’ religious beliefs.

The University’s mandates violated “clearly established” constitutional rights, the court held.

The 55-page ruling, issued on 7 May, was a reversal of a previous lower-court decision.

The appeal was filed in March 2022 by the Thomas More Society on behalf of 17 faculty and students who claimed that the university refused to respect their religious objections to taking the vaccine.

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Vatican preparing ‘guidelines’ for ‘apparitions’, ‘other supernatural phenomena’

The Vatican is preparing to release a document giving guidance on how to discern supernatural phenomena. 

The Holy See Press Office announced the upcoming document will be published May 17 with a live-streamed press conference featuring Prefect for the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith Cardinal Víctor Manuel Fernández.

Fernández has previously said the dicastery is “in the process of finalizing a new text with clear guidelines and norms for the discernment of apparitions and other phenomena,” according to the National Catholic Register.

An “apparition” refers to an instance in which a divine entity — such as a saint, the Virgin Mary, or Christ himself — makes itself known to a person on Earth. The concept is a recurring theme in the Bible and most Christian denominations affirm the belief that such brushes with the supernatural can still occur today in various capacities.

The Catholic Church urges “extreme prudence” before ascribing phenomena to a supernatural force, warning that being too quick to attribute divine origin to explainable occurrences can damage the faith and warp belief.

Alleged apparitions are usually documented and scrutinized by the diocesan bishop’s office and then forwarded to Rome for further investigation.

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