Pothole Pros?

Trevor Phillips thinks that he is the Conscience of the Nation, yet his best man was Peter Mandelson, whose description of Jeffrey Epstein as his own “best pal” must have cut Phillips to the bone. Still, Zack Polanski had already sold out by apologising to Mark Rowley, so that is the end of him if you ever had a beginning of him. We told you so.

But at least Polanski did not cry off interrogation by the mighty Laura Kuenssberg. That was left to a man to whom she had never directed a difficult question, but who seems to have expected one this time. First Nigel Farage’s undeclared five million pounds, and now the JCB Pothole Pro, which is clearly a topnotch product from its use by councils of all colours, but which is namechecked on the election leaflets only of the party to which JCB had given £200,000. Welcome to scrutiny. And who knew that Reform UK was such a cheap date? Christopher Harborne must be kicking himself.

Farage could kick, if he could be bothered. There is ball at his feet, and here it is, Kemi Badenoch telling LBC that she was “born in a country that was 50 per cent Muslim”, even though her British citizenship depended on her having been born in the United Kingdom before her heroine, Margaret Thatcher, had abolished birthright citizenship. Badenoch also failed to mention that her Muslim grandmother had converted to Christianity. And even as, on the other side, the granddaughter of a Methodist minister, Badenoch claims to have taken part in Islamic Friday prayers, “because that was what happened there when I was in school.” Really? Like a lot of churchgoers in this country these days, I know Nigerian Christians, and again I ask, “Really?”

Untold? More Like Unhinged

Barking mad stuff about Opus Dei from the Financial Times. People who say this sort of thing are like people who say wild things about the Jesuits. In either case, they have clearly never met them. But in both cases, take them at their word. Be the Catholic that both sides of the Epstein Class think that you already are.

Falling On Its Face

Jessica Murray and Robert Booth write:

Britain’s biometrics watchdogs have warned that national oversight of AI-powered face scanning to catch criminals is lagging far behind the technology’s rapid growth.

With the Metropolitan police almost doubling the number of faces they scan in London over the past 12 months and a rising use of the technology by retailers in the UK, Prof William Webster, the biometrics commissioner for England and Wales, said the “slow pace of legislation was trying to catch up with the real world” and “the horse had gone before the cart”.

Dr Brian Plastow, who holds the same role in Scotland, warned the technology was “nowhere near as effective as the police claim it is” and said there was a “patchwork legal framework” throughout the UK. He said in England and Wales, police were “really just marking their own homework”.

The watchdogs said new laws were needed to govern when and how police forces used live facial recognition technology, with a new regulator to clamp down on misuse.

Several bodies have oversight of the technology, including the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) and the Equality and Human Rights Commission.

The Home Office is considering a new legal framework for the technology as it also plans to introduce nationally what it calls “the biggest breakthrough for catching criminals since DNA matching”.

Members of the public wrongly labelled as suspected criminals by shops using AI cameras said there was no accountability or recourse to complain. They said the system had left them feeling “guilty until proven innocent”.

They described the ICO, which is responsible for monitoring facial recognition tech and the biometric data it uses, as “toothless” and unresponsive.

British police forces and high street retailers claim the technology makes streets safer, but others criticise it as Big Brother-style mass surveillance, with risks for civil liberties and data privacy.

So far this year the Met has scanned more than 1.7 million faces in London hunting for suspects on watchlists, up 87% on the same period in 2025.

It has also emerged:

• An independent audit of the Met’s use of facial recognition technology (FRT) has been indefinitely postponed after the police requested delays.
• Polling shows 57% of people believe the systems are “another step towards turning the UK into a surveillance society”. 
• A whistleblower claimed shop-based face-scanning systems had sometimes been misused by shop or security staff “maliciously” adding members of the public to watchlists.

Webster said: “We could be talking three years, at a minimum, before regulation is in place and active. And we already have a rollout of live face recognition in a dozen different police forces.

“The technology is becoming cheaper and cheaper, and in time we will see it everywhere, including in the static surveillance camera network.”

In February, The Guardian revealed how police arrested a man for a burglary in a city he had never visited after face-scanning software deployed across the UK confused him with another person of south Asian heritage.

Several other people have told The Guardian about the impact of being misidentified by face-scanning software increasingly used by retailers to fight shoplifting.

Further concern about limited scrutiny of the fast-developing technology has been caused by the postponement of the ICO’s planned audit of the Met’s use of AI-powered face scanning to find wanted criminals.

The ICO, which is the UK’s data regulator, had scheduled the investigation for October last year. But the Met asked for it to be pushed back and it is no longer certain it will go ahead, according to emails obtained by The Guardian under the Freedom of Information Act.

They show the Met cited as reasons for delay its need to handle a legal challenge to its face-scanning policy, about which a court ruled in its favour last week, officers taking Christmas leave and the burden of policing new year festivities.

The ICO accepted its request and the investigation is no longer certain to go ahead, prompting claims the regulator is being “insufficiently aggressive”.

David Davis MP, the former shadow home secretary and a civil liberties campaigner, said: “[FRT] is a massive development with all sorts of implications. The ICO should be the defender of the ordinary citizen and should be far more aggressive in what it does.”

The ICO and the Met said the timing of the judicial review meant it was appropriate to postpone the proposed audit.

The Met said: “We have always been transparent about our use of facial recognition technology and welcome independent scrutiny.” The ICO said it was reviewing whether the audit was rescheduled.

Polling of 2,000 adults last month by Opinium found that nearly a third opposed the use of facial recognition by retailers. In addition, 62% worried about the technology getting people into trouble for things they had not done, according to the poll, commissioned by Face Int, a biometric security company.

Face-scanning software is being increasingly used by retail chains to target shoplifters and antisocial and violent behaviour in stores. Sainsbury’s, Budgens and Sports Direct are among the chains using Facewatch in some shops.

The technology analyses CCTV footage and compares faces against a private database of known offenders, alerting staff when a match is made.

Big Brother Watch, a civil liberties campaign group, said it had been contacted by 21 people during the past year who believed they had been wrongly placed on watchlists or misidentified.

Ian Clayton, a retired health and safety professional from Chester, was asked to leave Home Bargains in February after being told he had been flagged on a facial recognition system as a thief. He later found out he had been wrongly associated with a shoplifter he had happened to stand next to on a previous visit.

“It feels very Orwellian,” he said. “We’re constantly being recorded and put on these systems but should we be there? It feels like spying without cause. It left me feeling vulnerable, exposed and a little bit helpless. I’m hyper-aware of cameras now.”

The same thing happened to Warren Rajah, a data strategist in south London, on a visit to Sainsbury’s. “This is a civil rights issue that we are slow-waltzing into,” he said. “We know cameras cannot pick up features of people that have darker features with as much accuracy.”

Meanwhile, a whistleblower has claimed the systems have sometimes been misused by shop or security staff “maliciously” adding members of the public to watchlists even though they have not been caught doing anything wrong.

Paul Fyfe, a former security guard who worked using Facewatch cameras in Stockton-on-Tees until last September, said in some cases staff had tagged members of the public on watchlists even when they had not been caught shoplifting or committing violence.

“If you’ve got someone there that you’re pissed off with, that you can’t catch or you’re getting chew off [being hassled] or they are threatening you, the easiest way to harm them is to upload them on the system,” he said. “[On] 10 to 15 occasions, I know people have been tagged for malicious reasons.”

The result was that security guards in other stores with the same software would be alerted whenever they entered.

Facewatch’s CEO, Nick Fisher, said: “We do not recognise the claims that the incident reporting system is being misused, including the serious allegation that individuals are being added maliciously.

“The system has been purposely designed not to allow misuse, and we have strict rules governing how the system can be used, with safeguards and controls built in. Retailers must meet clear evidential standards before submitting a record, and every submission is subject to human review before any individual is added to the database. If a submission does not meet the required standard, it is rejected and returned to the retailer.”

And Jessica Murray also writes:

When Ian Clayton, a retired health and safety professional from Chester, popped into Home Bargains one February lunchtime, he was suddenly approached by a stern-looking member of staff.

“Excuse me, can you please put everything down and leave the shop now?” she said. Clayton recalled how he was stunned, and it was only as he was briskly walked past the tills towards the exit that he stopped to ask what he had done.

“You’ve come up on our system called Facewatch as a shoplifter,” came the reply. “There’s a poster in the window.” With that, he was left outside the shop alone, with a QR code to scan and no idea what had happened.

He is one of a number of people who have spoken to The Guardian after being falsely identified as a thief by shops using Facewatch, a live facial recognition system being rolled out across the UK to clamp down on retail crime.

The company’s website claims that its system has a 99.98% accuracy rate and that last month it sent 50,288 alerts of “known offenders” to shops including B&M, Home Bargains, Sports Direct, Farm Foods and Spar, which all now use the software.

But those who have been wrongly identified and forced to leave shops, either via the technology itself or human error, say they were given no support, and did not know how to complain about their treatment or prove their innocence.

Clayton, 67, said that after he was ejected from Home Bargains he tried calling a phone number on a Facewatch poster, and was sent through to a message saying the company did not take calls and he had to send an email instead.

He was only able to get answers after submitting a subject access request – a formal request under data protection laws for personal information – that revealed he had been incorrectly associated with a shoplifting incident on a previous visit to the shop.

“It was like I was guilty until proven innocent. It’s an awful feeling. It leaves a pit in your stomach and when I look back now I can feel it again,” he said.

“It feels very Orwellian. We’re constantly being recorded and put on these systems but should we be there? It feels like spying without cause. I’m hyper aware of cameras everywhere now, I’m so aware of them.”

Home Bargains eventually issued him an apology and a £100 voucher as a “gesture of goodwill without admission”, on the condition that the details of the incident remain confidential. Clayton declined: “I just thought: ‘Really, you’re trying to buy my silence?’”

As facial recognition spreads across police forces and retail stores, UK biometrics commissioners are warning that national oversight is lagging far behind the technology’s rapid expansion.

Last year, the Home Office admitted facial recognition cameras were more likely to incorrectly identify black and Asian people than their white counterparts, and women more than men, and there have been conflicting studies on their overall accuracy.

“For me, this is a civil rights issue that we are slow-waltzing into because if you are just removed without question, your civil rights are being impacted,” he said.

“We already live in a country that has issues with racism, it’s an unavoidable issue. And we know cameras cannot pick up features of people that have darker features with as much accuracy. And this could be happening to people who are much more vulnerable than me.” 

He said he had major concerns about this technology being rolled out in police forces, as well as in the retail sector.

“Who is regulating these companies and can they be trusted with our information? And more importantly, no one has actually defined what your recourse is when something goes wrong,” he said.

After countless emails, he eventually found out he was not on the Facewatch database system and staff members had misidentified him. He was offered a £75 voucher as an apology – when he said he did not feel comfortable returning to the store, he was told to use it online.

Jennie Sanders, 48, from Birmingham, was browsing in B&M on a Saturday afternoon last year when a security guard told her she had been flagged up on the Facewatch system and he had to escort her around the store to check she was not stealing.

“I was really upset. It was in front of loads of people, and I was really embarrassed. I said I wanted to leave and he escorted me out of the shop,” she said. 

“It was scary but what was more scary was when I got home and started looking into Facewatch, I saw they share the information between loads of retailers.

“I thought: ‘I’m going to be treated like a shoplifter in every store. I’m not going to be able to do any shopping in person ever again.’”

She was told she had to send a copy of her passport to Facewatch to prove her identity before she could find out that she was on the system for stealing a bottle of wine from B&M, which she said never happened.

B&M told her it no longer had any evidence, including CCTV footage from the day, so she was taken off the system and offered a £25 voucher.

“I took a couple of days off work, I was absolutely beside myself. Why was I on a database of criminals without my knowledge?” she said. “I’m never going into B&M again. I try to stay away from places with cameras at all – it has really affected me.”  Sanders said she complained to the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), the formal watchdog monitoring how personal information is being used in facial recognition technology, but seven months later she had yet to hear back.

She added: “We’re told to raise complaints and send all correspondence to the information commissioner, but they don’t get back to you. What the hell is happening with any sort of response to the victims of this?”

Rajah had also considered complaining to the ICO, but could find no information on how to do so.

“They are so toothless,” he said. “And this issue has been well reported, and they haven’t publicised a formal complaints process. Where’s that information? How can you complain when there are no avenues to follow?”

A Sainsbury’s spokesperson said: “We have sincerely apologised to Mr Rajah for his experience in our Elephant and Castle store. This was not an issue with the facial recognition technology in use but a case of the wrong person being approached in store.

“The Facewatch system has a 99.98% accuracy rate and all matches are reviewed by trained managers, with additional training provided after this incident to ensure our safeguards are consistently followed.”

Nick Fisher, the chief executive of Facewatch, said: “We are aware of the matters referenced and in each case, we acted promptly once they contacted the Facewatch data protection team.

“These cases relate to human error in the way processes were carried out in-store, rather than any failure of Facewatch’s technology. We are sorry these individuals experienced being challenged while shopping and understand why this would have been upsetting.

“These three errors are extremely rare cases when viewed in the context of the more than 500,000 alerts we send to retailers each year, but we recognise that any mistake is upsetting for the individual concerned. The system is designed to support, not replace, human decision-making.”

A spokesperson for the ICO said: “We recognise the harm and upset that can be caused by misidentification. For this reason, use of facial recognition technology must strictly comply with data protection law and be handled with care and transparency.

“If someone has concerns about how their data has been collected, used, or shared, and those concerns cannot be resolved with the retailer directly, they have the right to raise a complaint with us.

“We also continue to actively regulate in this area and will be publishing further retail‑focused guidance to support retailers in understanding and meeting their data protection obligations, while ensuring the public is properly protected.”

Home Bargains and B&M declined to comment.

Continuing Patterns of Trauma

Thomas Colsy writes:

A major Swedish study has found that nearly all individuals who have been filmed for commercial pornography reported severe childhood abuse, with 88 per cent experiencing sexual abuse as children, adding weight to concerns that many participants in the adult industry may be continuing patterns of trauma rather than exercising fully free choice.

The research, titled “The experience of individuals filmed for pornography production: a history of continuous polyvictimisation and ongoing mental health challenges”, was published in 2025 in the Nordic Journal of Psychiatry by Meghan Donevan, Linda S Jonsson and Carl Göran Svedin. It examined the experiences of 120 adults, the vast majority of them women, who had appeared in pornography. Nearly all participants, 95.8 per cent, had suffered at least one form of childhood abuse, including sexual abuse reported by 88.3 per cent, psychological abuse by 90 per cent and physical abuse by around 79 per cent. Roughly one-third had been placed in foster care or institutionalised during childhood.

The consequences extended into their time in pornography production itself. Participants reported high levels of further abuse, including verbal abuse in 87 per cent of cases and rape in 65 per cent of cases. Mental health outcomes were particularly stark: 84 per cent showed clinically significant symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, 60 per cent had significant dissociative symptoms, 69 per cent had attempted suicide and 80 per cent had received at least one mental health diagnosis. The authors described a pattern of continuous polyvictimisation and called for stronger mental health support and legal reforms to better protect vulnerable people in the industry.

These findings align with a broader body of research linking early trauma to later involvement in prostitution and pornography. Multiple earlier studies have documented elevated rates of childhood sexual abuse and post-traumatic stress among women in the sex trade, suggesting that what is often presented as autonomous adult choice can instead reflect the long shadow of prior victimisation.

The Swedish data has added fuel to public debate over extreme content on platforms such as OnlyFans. Performers including Tiffany Wisconsin, also known as Tiffany Goodtime, have drawn attention after participating in high-risk “challenges”. Following one widely publicised scene involving multiple men, she underwent reconstructive anal surgery and later filmed herself from her hospital bed discussing her recovery while reassuring followers she would soon return to producing content. Similarly, the British creator Bonnie Blue, whose real name is Tia Billinger, has gained a large following and significant earnings while using promotional language that invites men to “destroy” her and “rearrange my insides”, presenting such statements as part of an empowered brand.

In an April article in The Critic titled “The limits of choice”, Josephine Bartosch argued that society sometimes knows better than individuals who are harming themselves. She pointed out that government bodies and regulators continue to consult participants in the sex industry as if they were neutral stakeholders, despite evidence of widespread prior trauma and clear financial incentives to downplay harm. Bartosch contended that consent, while important, is a flimsy shield when deep psychological vulnerability, past abuse or economic pressure is involved, and that normalising extreme acts as liberation ultimately reshapes societal standards around sex and violence.

Defenders of the industry maintain that adult performers are capable of making their own decisions and that criticism or regulation does more harm by increasing stigma. Yet the Swedish study, alongside visible cases of physical injury and public affirmations of extreme practices, has intensified questions about where the boundary lies between personal autonomy and the need for societal protection against self-harm and exploitation.

The full study is publicly available through the Nordic Journal of Psychiatry.

And Clement Harrold writes:

During my first year of graduate studies at Notre Dame, the university introduced Grubhub robots to its campus. The move encapsulated so much of the moral schizophrenia that afflicts this great academic institution.

On the one hand, students are endlessly informed – in school-wide emails, in bulletin boards, in homilies – that the university cares about their physical, mental and spiritual health. Yet this messaging is belied by the fact that the administration simultaneously chooses to sully its beautiful campus with ugly bots whose sole purpose is to spare students the immense inconvenience of having to take a short walk to collect their fast food.

If the university were actually sincere about supporting the health of its students, it would recognise that it is a good thing to be forced to step away from your laptop and get some sunlight and exercise before tucking into your Chick-fil-A sandwich. This kind of logic used to be obvious to reasonable people – but no longer, apparently, at Notre Dame.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the slavish defenders of the robots attempt to justify their existence on the grounds that a student might be sick, or disabled, or… lazy and overweight. It never seems to occur to these apologists to ask themselves what it says about Notre Dame as a Catholic community if students with sickness or disability feel so isolated that their only recourse is to receive their dinner from an insentient droid.

In the absence of any plausible justification for the robots’ presence on campus, one is forced to conclude that the only reason Notre Dame permits it is so that it can benefit financially from feeding the unhealthy habits of its student body. Sure, the desperately shy and lonely freshman now has no reason to leave his dorm room for anything other than class, but apparently that is acceptable as long as the people at the Golden Dome can make a quick buck. And if you thought a $20 billion endowment would be enough to dissuade them from resorting to such crass profiteering, you would be mistaken.

This is not the only instance of Notre Dame pursuing policies that directly contradict its stated desire to care for its students. On April 14, the university finally agreed to implement a pornography filter for its campus Wi-Fi following years of lobbying from different student groups. At long last, Our Lady’s University can take pride in achieving the moral clarity of McDonald’s and Starbucks.

Except, it cannot even do that. Because whereas McDonald’s, Starbucks and countless other Fortune 500 companies have the sense to block all sexually explicit content on the simple basis that ‘this content is disgusting and you should not be consuming it in our restaurants’, for Notre Dame this was a step too far. And so the Wi-Fi filter was established on a purely optional basis, leaving students to decide for themselves whether they wish to use the university’s broadband to access the ocean of moral filth that exists online.

What could possibly justify such a spineless policy? One argument is that open access to pornography is part and parcel of academic freedom. The proponents of this view seem to purposefully ignore the fact that the kinds of ‘scholars’ who are using hardcore porn for research purposes are almost always creepy weirdos who should not be employed at a Catholic university. But even if they have good intentions, there is no reason for their research to negatively affect the entire student body.

Another argument is of the defeatist type, which says that there is no point in blocking porn because students will still access it over mobile data. The objection undermines itself: if the porn filter makes no difference, then why are you so opposed to it? But in fact, experience shows that such measures do make a difference.

A key element in overcoming an addiction is to make the drug less convenient to access. There would, moreover, be a profound pedagogical value in the university choosing to block all porn. Lex magistra vitae. The law is a teacher, and when porn is prohibited over the communal Wi-Fi students are consciously and subconsciously reminded that this content is both gravely evil and socially unacceptable.

At the end of the day, all of the attempted justifications for keeping porn accessible stem from the same place: they wilfully or naively ignore just how depraved the porn industry actually is. Abortion, divorce, child trafficking, gender dysphoria and atheism are all its hideous legacy. In a just society, the corporate bosses at PornHub would not just be ostracised; they would be rounded up and sentenced to life in jail for crimes against humanity.

Scripture tells us that God will hold teachers and priests especially accountable for how they have looked after those under their care. The president and board of trustees at Notre Dame should take this to heart when they choose to stand by the current policy. Like all of us, they will one day stand before the judgement seat of the One who said it would be better to be cast into the sea with a millstone around one’s neck than to cause one of His little ones to stumble.

On that fateful day, all those who have been complicit in the spread of pornography will be confronted with the victims whom they failed to protect. The little boy robbed of innocence in what should have been his happiest years. The actress who is exploited and abused from a young age. The husband who despairs of ever finding healing and whose marriage has fallen apart. The wife whose sense of self-worth is permanently shattered. The child in the womb who is cruelly murdered as a result of a promiscuous culture that treats persons as objects.

Internet porn has ravaged an entire generation – my generation – and I am fed up hearing effeminate boomers pretend otherwise. Never before in human history has a sector been so effective at normalising the most abhorrent violations of human dignity. This is the modern slave trade, dealing not only in bodies but in the millions of souls who have fallen into its snares.

In order to begin healing a culture that is awash with evil, we must begin by turning off the tap. Pornography is that tap, and it is high time for Notre Dame to get with the programme and start protecting its students.

Since there cannot be a “free” market in general, but not in drugs, or prostitution, or pornography, or unrestricted alcohol, or unrestricted gambling, then there must not be a “free” market in general, which is a political choice, not a law of nature. Enacting and enforcing laws against drugs, prostitution and pornography, and regulating alcohol, tobacco and gambling, are clear examples of State intervention in, and regulation of, the economy. But unlike the Conservative Party, which merely thinks that it is and acts as if it were, the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats are constitutionally committed to the “free” market. It was in 2000, under Tony Blair, that the introduction of the R18 rating effectively legalised hardcore pornography. As with the downgrading of cannabis to a Class C drug between 2004 and 2009, and as with the mercifully failed attempt to set up supercasinos while successfully permitting gambling companies to advertise on radio and television, that was what the replacement of Clause IV wrought.

Radical change would be impossible if the workers, the youth and the poor were in a state of stupefaction, and that baleful situation, which has been contrived in the past, is being contrived again today, both by means of drugs, and specifically among young males by means of pornography. In Ukraine, when they tore down statues of Alexander Pushkin and renamed streets that had been named after him, they legalised pornography to help pay for the war. Even before then, some people had already been taking payment to strip on camera via the “charity project” Teronlyfans, to fund the Armed Forces.

Pornography had been legally prohibited and practically unknown in the Soviet Union. But post-Soviet Russia was flooded with it, to placate the young male population during the larceny of their country by means of the economic “shock therapy” that created today’s oligarchs. “Sex work” of various kinds has always been encouraged when the young men have needed to be stupefied, and it still is. The corporate capitalist pornogrification of our own society is no accident. In welcoming the endorsement of Bonnie Blue, Reform UK has picked its side. The same side as the Green Party.

This Deliberate Act

Elis Gjevori writes:

A Catholic charity has condemned Israel after its forces destroyed a convent in southern Lebanon, in what it said is a deliberate attack on a place of worship.

The French organisation L’Oeuvre d’Orient said Israeli troops demolished a convent belonging to the Salvatorian Sisters, a Greek Catholic religious order, in the village of Yaroun.

“L’Oeuvre d’Orient strongly condemns this deliberate act of destruction against a place of worship, as well as the systematic demolition of homes in southern Lebanon aimed at preventing the return of civilian populations,” the group said in a statement on Friday.

The charity said the attack forms part of a wider pattern of attacks on Christian heritage, noting that “Christian sanctuaries were also destroyed during the war in 2024, such as the Melkite churches in the villages of Yaroun and Derdghaya, both classified as part of Lebanon’s heritage”.

Images circulating in April showed an Israeli soldier using a jackhammer to desecrate a statue of Jesus on a cross in southern Lebanon, fuelling anger among Christian communities around the world.

Reports of violence against Christians have intensified across the region.

In occupied East Jerusalem, a nun was assaulted earlier this week near the Cenacle on Mount Zion. The 48-year-old researcher received medical treatment after sustaining facial injuries.

Restrictions have also extended to religious practices. Last month, Israeli police blocked the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Cardinal Pierbattista Pizzaballa, and other clergy from holding Palm Sunday Mass at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre before partially restoring access following international pressure.

A recent report by the Rossing Centre for Education and Dialogue documented a sharp rise in attacks on Christians, describing a “continued and expanding pattern of intimidation and aggression”.

It recorded 155 incidents in 2025, including 61 physical assaults, 52 attacks on church property, 28 cases of harassment and 14 instances of vandalised signage. The report said the figures represent only the “tip of the iceberg”.

Israel’s military said following the latest attack on Saturday that its forces damaged a “religious building” in Yaroun during operations targeting what it described as infrastructure in the area.

Israel has continued its attacks on Lebanon despite a ceasefire announced on April 17 to halt more than six weeks of its war on Lebanon.

Lebanon’s National News Agency reported on Saturday that at least 2,659 people have been killed and 8,183 wounded between March 2 and May 2 by Israeli forces.

Already Kills The Person

Terry O’Neill writes:

A Vancouver priest recovering from a hip fracture at Vancouver General Hospital says he was twice offered assisted death by health-care staff who knew he was a priest and opposed to euthanasia — a practice critics say is growing as medical professionals are increasingly encouraged to initiate such conversations.

“There are some things you just don’t talk about to some people,” said Father Larry Holland, who has completed studies in health-care chaplaincy in addition to serving at numerous parishes in the Archdiocese of Vancouver.

He described his reaction when a doctor brought up the option of MAiD should his condition deteriorate. “I think I was very shocked,” he said. “It is such a sensitive subject.”

Father Holland, 79, is currently convalescing at VGH after suffering a hip fracture from a fall in his bathroom on Christmas Day. He spoke to The B.C. Catholic about the offers of medical assistance in dying (MAiD) from two health-care professionals, despite their knowing he was a Catholic priest.

Father Holland said he wasn’t dying then or now and that the doctor’s mention of MAiD left him “kind of silent” for a moment. The doctor then raised the subject again, saying it’s “something they have to discuss with someone who’s been given a terminal diagnosis.”

Father Holland recalled telling the doctor he was morally opposed to euthanasia. The doctor explained that “he just wanted to make sure that, if a [terminal] diagnosis came up or not ... I knew of the different services I had access to.”

Weeks later, a second offer of MAiD came from a nurse who the priest said seemed uncomfortable raising the topic and was likely doing so out of compassion because of the pain he was enduring.

“It’s a false compassion, really,” he said.

A spokesman for Vancouver Coastal Health, which operates VGH, told The B.C. Catholic in an email that “staff may consider bringing up MAiD based on their clinical judgment, provided they possess the necessary knowledge and skills to do so.”

Staff are also “responsible for answering questions when patients bring up the topic of MAiD,” the spokesman said.

The two incidents arise as Canada approaches 100,000 assisted dying deaths, a milestone explored in a B.C. Catholic series starting this week. Over the next several weeks, the paper will look at how a decade of legalized killing has reshaped health care, ethics, and attitudes toward life and death in Canada.

Father Larry Lynn, the Archdiocese’s pro-life chaplain, said he was shocked to hear about Father Holland’s case.

“This must surely be among the most appalling examples of Canada’s coercive and insensitive euthanasia regime,” Father Lynn said in an interview.

He said it’s disturbing that a health-care provider suggests euthanasia with any patient, and particularly when the patient is a consecrated religious known to be morally opposed. “It places the medical practitioner into the role of the devil, tempting a vulnerable person into mortal sin.”

He’s equally troubled that Canadian euthanasia providers aren’t ruling out initiating discussions with Roman Catholics about MAiD. In a document titled Bringing up Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) as a clinical care option, the Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers recommends against assuming patients oppose MAiD because of their faith.

The document says, “Health care professionals may draw incorrect assumptions about a person’s views on MAiD; e.g., they may assume that a patient objects to MAiD because she is a Roman Catholic nun, and yet Roman Catholic nuns and others dedicated to a faith-based way of life have requested MAiD.” The booklet does not provide a source for the information.

An updated version published in March removes the Catholic reference but gives the same advice regarding people of a “faith community” and even those of “strong faith.”

Father Lynn called it “diabolical” to use a nun as an example for overcoming a patient’s moral objections.

The booklet reflects a recent trend of encouraging health-care personnel to initiate MAiD discussions with patients. In November, The B.C. Catholic reported on a little-known 2023 Health Canada document urging health authorities and professional bodies to adopt “practice standards” requiring doctors and nurse practitioners to raise MAiD with certain patients.

The MAiD assessors and providers document similarly says physicians and nurse practitioners involved in care planning and consent processes “have a professional obligation to initiate a discussion about MAiD if a patient might be eligible for MAiD.” However, Health Canada does not have the authority to require provinces or health authorities to adopt such guidelines and The B.C. Catholic found no evidence of any public agency or professional body in B.C. doing so.

The Canadian Association of MAiD Assessors and Providers uses the example of a Catholic nun to warn against assuming patients oppose MAiD because of their faith.

Amanda Achtman, creator of the anti-euthanasia project Dying to Meet You and ethics director of Canadian Physicians for Life, says initiating MAiD discussions in a medical setting is a form of coercion that attacks patients’ deepest convictions when they’re vulnerable. To “torment” someone who has deeply held beliefs with an offer of MAiD is “an attack on their identity,” Achtman said.

Father Holland admitted he was in so much pain that he could “feel the temptation” to accept MAiD. “It’s a human reaction. We always look for the easy way out.”

Conservative MP Garnett Genuis has introduced Bill C-260, An Act to Prevent Coercion of Persons Not Seeking Medical Assistance in Dying, which would prohibit federal employees from proactively offering or recommending MAiD. The bill resulted from incidents of bureaucrats such as veterans counsellors trying to steer vulnerable people toward assisted dying.

The Alberta government introduced legislation in March that would restrict regulated health professionals from providing information about MAiD to their patients unless the patient brings it up. The Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act would also restrict the public display of MAiD information, such as posters, within health-care facilities.

The bill is worth supporting, said Achtman, who lives in Calgary. “Simply being offered euthanasia already kills the person, because it defeats and deflates their sense of self-worth and value.”

The unwanted initiation of MAiD discussions in Canada made international headlines in March after Achtman shared the story of an 84-year-old woman, Miriam Lancaster, who went to VGH last year for severe back pain. She said the first doctor she spoke with in the emergency room raised MAiD before any diagnostic work had been done. Lancaster’s daughter was present and confirmed the incident, adding her mother eventually responded to rehabilitation and rest.

The Catholic chaplain at VGH, Father Ronald Sequeira, said it’s a constant struggle to help suffering patients not lose hope. He tries to offer them “some kind of encouragement and comfort,” but many give up.

“The moment you lose hope, the devil comes in, in different personalities, and says, ‘Do you want MAiD? I don’t want people to suffer.’”

Patients often don’t realize that suffering is redemptive, he said. “God makes us more pure, more strong, through the suffering when we offer it up,” Father Sequeira said. “So we give hope — help them not to lose hope.”

Father Holland said turning down an offer of death opens one to new experiences. Even enduring pain “can encourage growth,” he said. “It can motivate you, it can open up new worlds, new vistas, new opportunities,” including enriched relationships.

He said he is sharing his story in the hope it will help others. “I went through it; you can go through it too.”

From Phantom Heresy To Uncomfortable Reality

As one who would hitherto have been described as a conservative, Fr Dwight Longenecker writes:

Scrolling through social media this morning, I was struck by a double image: a jet fighter with a large icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary blazoned across it, next to an AI-generated image of Donald Trump radiating a kind of messianic glory in front of a flowing American flag and the motto ‘Thank God for Trump’. The person posting bore the profile name ‘Our Lady of Guadalupe’. Above the double image that ‘Our Lady of Guadalupe’ posted was the text: ‘God bless America and Trump. Thank you Jesus for sending Trump to stand up to an apostate pope in error with church doctrine.’

The bitter vituperation against Pope Leo by right-wing American Catholics is astonishing. After the Pope’s clash with Trump over the war in Iran and his support for the poor and immigrants, social media posts from Trump supporters have called Pope Leo a homosexual, a lackey of the Lavender Mafia, a puppet of the left-wing Obama/Axelrod political machine, a socialist, a communist and a hand-picked successor to the Marxist shielder of sex offenders, Pope Francis. The frightening fanaticism of die-hard Catholic Trump supporters is bewildering, but when one looks at the history and wider context, it is not surprising.

For wider context, one needs to understand American politics from the post-war period onwards. Of the two political parties – Republican and Democrat – the Democrats presented themselves as the party of the poor, the dispossessed, the immigrants and the working class. They were for the little man: the trade unions, equal rights, welfare and standing up against the wealthy East Coast establishment. As such, the Democrats also had the Catholic vote. The Republicans stood for the wealthy, the property owners, the white Protestant middle class, much of the university-educated and the establishment elite.

But from the 1960s onwards there was an about-turn. It became fashionable to defend the poor and fight for equal rights, and those equal rights were not only for black Americans. Feminists and homosexuals were also demanding equal rights. As intellectuals, the entertainment industry and media figures joined in, the Democratic Party became the party of a new kind of elite – the politically correct elite. What had been support for the poor, ethnic minorities, the working class and immigrants evolved into support for a wide spectrum of aggrieved identities. 

As the Democratic Party shifted from the working class to this new elite, its traditional base began to move. Ordinary working-class Democrats (and Catholics) realised that their common-sense values – both economic and moral – were more aligned with the Republican Party. This shift was driven in part by the ‘Moral Majority’ in the 1970s, which entered the culture wars over sexual morality and abortion, and through which Protestants and Catholics began to see themselves as allies rather than enemies.

In a television interview with Donald Trump decades before he pursued political ambitions, the interviewer was walking down a street in New York City and asked Trump if he had ever considered politics. Trump replied, prophetically: ‘Sure, and if I did, I’d win.’

‘Who would vote for you?’ the interviewer asked.

Pointing to the construction workers on one of his building projects, Trump said: ‘Those guys up there’.

They were all waving to him and calling his name.

After the blue-blood East Coast establishment reign of the Bush family over the Republican Party, billionaire Donald Trump came to prominence. Formerly a registered Democrat, he understood the cultural shift that had taken place. The workers, the ‘little guys’, the silent majority were now Republicans, not Democrats. He portrayed himself as an ordinary man who had made good. He was shrewd and spoke – and acted – not like the Bush family, but like the construction workers.

Was he coarse and foul-mouthed? They were too. Did he have an eye for a beautiful woman? He was like them. Did he cut deals and make money? They wished they could. Did he avoid taxes, distrust big government and suspect the establishment of being corrupt? That was their view too. When he ended up being persecuted by that crooked and corrupt establishment, he became their martyr. When he survived an assassination attempt, that sealed the deal.

Now let us weave in religion. Many of these same working-class and middle-class Americans were Christians – both Catholic and Protestant. They did not like Trump’s language or morals, but they preferred him to the alternative, for by now the Democrats were firmly aligned with abortion rights, feminism, LGBTQ+ activism, transgender ideology and open borders.

Catholics who once voted Democrat because it was ‘the party of the poor’ hesitated when ‘the poor’ appeared to include a wide range of social outliers. In their attempt to be tolerant, the Democrats seemed, to these voters, to indulge the worst elements of the underclass – the indigent, addicts and the homeless. Catholics may have wanted to help the poor, but for many this was a bridge too far.

Donald Trump came with a promise to clean up cities, deport criminal immigrants, support the family, ‘drain the swamp’ in Washington and ‘Make America Great Again’.

When he took action alongside Israel regarding Iran, these supporters cheered – Catholics included. Many viewed Muslims as a threat and saw Iran’s actions, both internationally and domestically, as justification for American force.

For right-wing American Catholics there was an additional factor: Pope Francis. Many conservative Catholics believed that Francis disliked America, did not understand traditional Catholics and did not wish to. They viewed him as aligned with liberation theology and hostile to their concerns. If Francis did not like them, they returned the sentiment.

Now Pope Leo has assumed the throne of Peter, these same Catholics have convinced themselves that he is the result of a conclave shaped by Francis and his allies – Cardinals Cupich, Tobin and McElroy.

Too many are declaring that they are Catholic, but ‘this Pope is not my Pope’.

Mr Trump is their hero instead, and their battle cry is: ‘Thank you Jesus for sending Trump to stand up to an apostate pope.’

I realise there is little I can do to address this situation.

However, there are five steps I think ordinary American Catholics should take. First, we should heed the words of St Paul: ‘I urge that petitions, prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving be made for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness’ (I Timothy 2:1–2). Considering these words were written during the reign of Nero, it should not be too much to ask.

Second, we should admit that it is the Pope’s role to speak out on moral as well as doctrinal issues and that it is acceptable for him to challenge the White House. Third, we should do the Holy Father the courtesy of discovering what he really said, rather than relying on scare headlines from bias-affirming news sources and social media. Fourth, we should be better informed about Catholic social teaching, realising that it offers a more expansive approach to world affairs that is balanced and fully Catholic.

Finally, we should all try harder to see the issues from the other side. We may disagree with our fellow Catholics on political questions, but if we grant that they hold their positions in sincere good faith, they might return the courtesy and grant that we also hope, pray and work for the best. In this mutual respect, the unity at the heart of the Catholic faith will be nurtured and prosper.

And as one who would hitherto have been described as a liberal, David Gibson writes:

In 1899, Pope Leo XIII sent a letter to the Catholic bishops of the United States condemning the errors of what he called “Americanism”—a temptation, he warned, to embrace pluralism, religious liberty, and freedom of expression and other dangerously “Protestant” ideas in an effort to help Catholics assimilate to the surrounding culture. Not only did the Catholic Church eventually embrace most of the concepts that Leo deplored, but even at the time, the American bishops assured him that his objections were unfounded. In their view, Catholics in their country could be both good Americans and good Catholics. The bishops were right, and what became known as “the phantom heresy” of Americanism was largely forgotten.

But if Leo XIII was wrong about what would corrode the religious identity of Catholics back then, it turns out he was right to worry about American Catholic identity; he was just a century ahead of his time. The recent clashes between Pope Leo XIV—who took that name to signal his commitment to advancing the previous Leo’s better-known teachings on social justice—and the Trump administration have underscored how U.S. Catholics have come to behave as though they are religious authorities unto themselves. This ecclesiological framing best explains the unprecedented drama between Washington and the Vatican and the challenge facing the first American pope as he marks the one-year anniversary of his election.

President Trump sparked the war of words with a characteristically blustery social media post blasting Leo as “WEAK on Crime” and warning that Leo “should get his act together as Pope” because he was “hurting the Catholic Church.” It sounded as if Trump were lambasting a local official who had disobeyed a party boss rather than a Roman pontiff who had critiqued the president’s genocidal threat to send Iranians “back to the stone age, where they belong.” Trump refused to apologize for the post and doubled down on his insults (even as he deleted another post that depicted him as Jesus working a miracle, an AI image that offended many in his Evangelical base).

What was striking was that, despite some initial tone-policing from Trump’s Catholic allies, many prominent Catholics in the United States soon shifted the focus to debates over just-war theory or the proper relationship between church and state, and some of them suggested that it was Leo who had stepped over the line. “I love the Catholic Church,” border czar Tom Homan told reporters. “I just wish they’d stick to fixing the Church because there’s issues—I know because I’m a member—instead of politics.” Vice President J. D. Vance, who converted to Catholicism in 2019, went so far as to tell the pope that “it would be best for the Vatican to stick to matters of morality” and “what’s going on in the Catholic Church.” Later that week he warned the pope to “be careful” when he “opines on matters of theology.”

This episode is not just about the outsized egos of politicians or even policy differences, nor can it be chalked up to the naïveté of converts. Yes, Church leaders likely regard Vance’s pronouncements on theology the way epidemiologists view RFK Jr.’s opinions on vaccines. But the split really goes back to a deeper alienation between the U.S. Church and the rest of the Catholic Church. While the Catholic Church in the United States started as a “church of immigrants,” many of these newcomers followed the classic American progression from Democratic urban ethnic enclaves to mainline Republican suburbs, and from social liberalism to establishment conservatism. Throughout the relatively conservative papacies of John Paul II (1978–2005) and Benedict XVI (2005–2013), the emerging leaders of this rightward-leaning Catholicism could plausibly claim favored status in Rome. But there were awkward tensions even then. Occasionally, conservative Catholics in the United States had to redact a papal teaching to make it align with GOP economic orthodoxy and culture-war politics. They often spoke as if their zealous commitment to the Church’s teaching about abortion gave them leeway to disregard inconvenient papal statements—like John Paul II’s forceful denunciation of George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion in 2003. Notwithstanding their own differences with John Paul II and Benedict XVI, they insisted that any Catholic not aligned with the pope was a “bad” Catholic and unworthy of inclusion in the workings, ministries, and even sacraments of the Church.

Then two things happened. First, the conclave of March 2013 elected an Argentine cardinal, Pope Francis, who upended those conventions. Francis ended special access for conservative Americans and insisted that the Gospel message demanded that they, like all Catholics, welcome the stranger and care for the most vulnerable. Suddenly many self-styled “orthodox” Catholics could no longer claim a papal mandate for their ideology but neither could they claim a “good” Catholic had to agree with the pope because they obviously did not. One popular response to this predicament was to argue that not only was the pope wrong, but that he was promoting heresy and fomenting schism and might not even be a legitimate pope. This was not just dissent but a thoroughgoing dismissal of the papal magisterium.

The second development was the rise of Donald Trump. Having loosened the ties binding them to the wider Catholic world, many conservative U.S. Catholics attached themselves to Trump’s nationalist populism and then to the increasingly powerful Christian nationalism of his Evangelical base. Each step drew them further away from Rome’s orbit. In response to Mater et magistra, Pope John XXIII’s 1961 encyclical on the Church’s role promoting social justice, William F. Buckley’s National Review famously retorted, “Mater si, Magistra no”—mother yes, teacher no. The slogan of many conservative Catholics in 2026 might be “MAGA si, Magistra no.” U.S. Catholics these days can talk about Rome the way anti-Catholic Protestants used to, and they seem to think this is normal. Their first loyalty is not to the pope or any bishop, but to the leaders of their anti-globalist political movement. Consider that Vance’s backer and mentor, the idiosyncratically Christian tech billionaire Peter Thiel, says he worries about Vance’s “popeism” and counsels the vice president to distance himself from Rome, which he sees as the source of a potential “Caesaro-Papist fusion” that could usher in the anti-Christ.

The election of Pope Leo a year ago has not reversed this trend. Though different from Francis in various ways, Leo has made it clear from the start that he intends to maintain the missionary impulse and prophetic stance of his predecessor. Conservatives convinced Francis’s pontificate was anomalous were shocked that the College of Cardinals voted for continuity, not revanchism. Much of the Catholic right has spent the last year trying to interpret Leo as one of their own, but Leo eludes easy categorizations, and recent weeks have shown that he is no less willing to speak his mind than Francis was. Many Catholics in the United States would rather he didn’t.

The fierce response to Leo’s words represents a historic shift in the religious sensibility of American Catholicism, away from the communal toward a radical individualism, from the universal to a tribal nationalism. MAGA Catholics act as if they are arguing with some guy dressed in white running an NGO in Rome; they are in fact rejecting what the pope speaks for, and from: a tradition developed over centuries and a “sense of the faithful” representing some 1.4 billion other Catholics around the world (U.S. Catholics constitute just five percent of the Church).

The wealth and influence of U.S. Catholics has certainly contributed to this mindset, giving many an outsized view of their own might and righteousness. Some, like the bloviating Fox News anchor Sean Hannity, may declare themselves done with Catholicism. But most will stick around, while continuing to believe that, whatever any pope says, they themselves know best. Even if Trump falls out of favor with American Catholics, as he has with nearly every other sector of the electorate, what was once a phantom heresy will remain an uncomfortable reality.

Can the trend be reversed? One way forward would be for American Catholics to look outward. In Leo XIII’s day, the concern was to keep American Catholics connected to Rome. For Leo XIV, the challenge is to connect them to global Catholicism. It was perhaps providential that Leo embarked on his first marathon foreign trip, an eleven-day journey to Africa, just as the American president was taking aim at him. Much as Leo tried to tamp down the narrative that his every utterance was a direct response to Trump, the issues he highlighted during his four-nation journey were ones that also resonate in the United States—violence, corruption, economic inequality. In strife-torn Bamenda in northwest Cameroon, Leo told those gathered in the cathedral that, “in a world turned upside-down” and “ravaged by a handful of tyrants…today you are the city on the hill, resplendent in the eyes of all!” Here was the first pope from the United States conferring the foundational American identity—an image drawn from the Gospel of Matthew by the Puritan leader John Winthrop—on an African country that Donald Trump probably considers a “shithole.”

Similarly, on July 4, as his native country celebrates the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Leo will be celebrating Mass on a rocky Mediterranean island where desperate African refugees first find safe haven if they survive the perilous crossing. The pope’s visit to Lampedusa could be seen as a declaration of interdependence, a message that American ideals are inclusive, not tribal, as well as a vivid demonstration of how to be both a good American and a good Catholic.