Supreme Court turns down porn group's plea to block Texas age-verification law
http://www.myspiritfm.com/News?blogid=Catholic-News&view=post&articleid=275525&link=1&fldKeywords=&fldAuthor=&fldTopic=0
null / Credit: ShutterstockCNA Staff, May 1, 2024 / 11:30 am (CNA).The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined a request from the porn industry to block a Texas age-verification rule, allowing the law to stand and temporarily derailing the efforts of porn creators to see the new safety measure scuttled. The court said in an unsigned order without comment that it was denying a request from the Free Speech Coalition to issue a stay on the law. The Free Speech Coalition includes a porn trade association and several pornography creators. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has defended the law, HB 1181, since its passage last summer. The measure requires porn websites to institute "reasonable age-verification methods" to ensure minors are not accessing explicit sexual content on their sites. The attorney general has sued multiple pornography companies in order to enforce the age-verification law. He argued earlier this year that pornography...
null / Credit: Shutterstock
CNA Staff, May 1, 2024 / 11:30 am (CNA).
The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined a request from the porn industry to block a Texas age-verification rule, allowing the law to stand and temporarily derailing the efforts of porn creators to see the new safety measure scuttled.
The court said in an unsigned order without comment that it was denying a request from the Free Speech Coalition to issue a stay on the law. The Free Speech Coalition includes a porn trade association and several pornography creators.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has defended the law, HB 1181, since its passage last summer. The measure requires porn websites to institute "reasonable age-verification methods" to ensure minors are not accessing explicit sexual content on their sites.
The attorney general has sued multiple pornography companies in order to enforce the age-verification law. He argued earlier this year that pornography sites "are on the run because Texas has a law that aims to prevent them from showing harmful, obscene material to children."
"In Texas, companies cannot get away with showing porn to children," he said. "If they don't want to comply, they should leave Texas."
The porn industry has fought efforts to ensure that minors cannot access sexually explicit videos on their websites. Age-verification laws in Mississippi, Arkansas, Virginia, Montana, Utah, and North Carolina, for instance, have led Pornhub — one of the world's most prolific porn websites — to stop streaming its graphic sexual videos in those states.
The website earlier this year ceased offering its website in Texas rather than comply with its age-verification law.
The U.S. crackdown on underage porn access comes as regulators in Europe have undertaken similar measures. The European Union in December announced that Pornhub, along with two other high-traffic pornography sites, would have to comply with age-verification and safety laws passed in 2022 by the governing body.
Church leaders have been warning about the dangers of pornography for years. In 2022 Pope Francis called pornography "a permanent attack on the dignity of men and women," arguing that it "is not only a matter of protecting children — an urgent task of the authorities and all of us — but also of declaring pornography a threat to public health."
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops called pornography "a grave offense against God and his gifts to men and women" that offers "a means of selfish, lustful gratification" and which "attacks sexual desire and the conjugal act itself."
In 2020, meanwhile, Catholic anti-porn advocates launched a new online discussion and prayer platform called SOS Porn Deliverance, which offers "the opportunity for those affected by [porn addiction] to chat confidentially with an e-missionary trained in this mission."
Full Article
http://www.myspiritfm.com/News?blogid=Catholic-News&url=10&view=post&articleid=275973&link=1&fldKeywords=&fldAuthor=&fldTopic=0
Bishop Andrew Cozzens of Crookston, Minnesota, blesses the crowd with the Eucharist in a monstrance during an outdoor Pentecost Sunday Mass on May 19, 2024, in Bemidji, Minnesota. The Mass at the headwaters of the Mississippi River marked the start of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, a four-route trek consisting of Eucharistic processions, community service, and other events that culminates in July at the National Eucharistic Congress in Indianpolis. / Credit: Gianna Bonello/CNABemidji, Minnesota, May 19, 2024 / 21:47 pm (CNA).At the start of Mass Sunday at one of the launch sites of the National Eucharistic Pilgrimage, Bishop Andrew Cozzens remarked that although he had his hiking shoes on, the journey ahead would need something more than natural support to reach its intended destination."In order to make this pilgrimage fruitful, we need the Holy Spirit," said the Diocese of Crookston, Minnesota, bishop.If that's the case, then the National Eucharistic...
http://www.myspiritfm.com/News?blogid=Catholic-News&url=10&view=post&articleid=275964&link=1&fldKeywords=&fldAuthor=&fldTopic=0
Pope Francis participates in Mass on the solemnity of Pentecost, May 19, 2024. / Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNAVatican City, May 19, 2024 / 08:15 am (CNA).On the solemnity of Pentecost, Pope Francis said that Christians are called to proclaim the Gospel to everyone with gentleness and the power of the Holy Spirit. Speaking in St. Peter's Basilica, the pope explained that the Holy Spirit's "work in us is powerful, as symbolized by the signs of wind and fire," but it is also gentle and "welcoming to all.""From the 'upper room' of this basilica, like the apostles, we too are being sent forth to proclaim the Gospel to all," Pope Francis said in his homily on May 19.Pope Francis celebrates Mass on the solemnity of Pentecost, May 19, 2024. Credit: Daniel Ibanez/CNA"Thanks to the Spirit, we can and must do this with his own power and gentleness," he added.Pope Francis underlined that this power is not arrogant, calculating, or imposing but is "born of fidelity to the truth that the Sp...
http://www.myspiritfm.com/News?blogid=Catholic-News&url=10&view=post&articleid=275948&link=1&fldKeywords=&fldAuthor=&fldTopic=0
A map of the Juan Diego Route which goes through Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, ending in Indiana. / Credit: EWTN News In-DepthCNA Staff, May 18, 2024 / 05:00 am (CNA).The National Eucharistic Pilgrimage will span the United States with four different pilgrimages starting in California, Texas, Mississippi, and Connecticut and meeting in Indianapolis for the 10th National Eucharistic Congress."A cross-country pilgrimage of this scale has never been attempted before. All told, it will travel through 27 states and 65 dioceses, covering a combined distance of 6,500 miles on foot and with the help of support vehicles," said Tim Glemkowski, CEO of the National Eucharistic Congress, Inc. "It will be a tremendously powerful action of witness and intercession as it interacts with local parish communities at stops all along the way."The St. Juan Diego Route, named for the beloved saint who encountered Our Lady of Guadalupe, will start at the sou...