BREAKING: Former cardinal Theodore McCarrick charged with sexual assault in Wisconsin

Denver, Colo., Jul 18, 2017 / 05:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- In the last 24 hours more than twenty Catholic pages, some with millions of followers, have been blocked by Facebook for unknown reasons.

Of the known affected pages, 21 are based in Brazil, and four are English-language pages, with administrators in the U.S. and Africa. Most of the blocked pages had significant followings – between hundreds of thousands and up to 6 million followers each.

One of the blocked English-language fanpages was “Jesus and Mary”, which had 1.7 million followers. The page’s main cover photo was of the sacred hearts of Jesus and Mary.

Page administrator Godwin Delali Adadzie, a Ghanaian, told CNA he was on Facebook around 8 p.m. Central July 17 when he was asked to upload a photo of himself because his personal account had been “suspected of suspicious activities,” he said.

After several minutes, he was allowed back into his personal account, which had notifications informing him that his “Jesus and Mary” page had been disabled. He said every person who was approved as an editor on his page had to go through the same process.

Adadzie said he reviewed Facebook’s policies “and, honestly, I do not see any that I have violated in order for my page to be withdrawn.”

He has sent two appeals to Facebook but has yet to get a response.

Another blocked English-language page is “Catholic and Proud”, which had 6 million followers. Page administrator Kenneth Alimba of Nigeria told CNA his page was also blocked without explanation.

He has sent appeals to Facebook but is “not optimistic” about a response. He also told CNA that he noticed other Catholic Facebook pages that he runs, with fewer followers, are still online.

Another blocked English-language page is “Fr. Rocky,” belonging to U.S. priest Fr. Francis J. Hoffman, executive director of Relevant Radio, whose page had 3.5 million likes. Fr. Hoffman could not be reached for comment by press time.

Facebook has yet to respond to requests for comment on the blocked pages. Facebook is the largest social network in the world, having recently reached more than 2 billion users.

While it remains unknown why these pages were blocked, some of the page administrators have said they wonder whether they are being censored.

In 2016, Facebook came under fire for allegedly censoring trends to news deemed “conservative.”

On that occasion, Mark Zuckerberg rejected the allegations of censorship, and met with conservative U.S. leaders to assure them Facebook’s neutrality.

In the past, user accounts have also been inadvertently blocked on Facebook due to system glitches, or numerous complaints against the page in a short time period. In these cases, Facebook restored the accounts after reviewing their content.

Brantly Millegan contributed to this report.

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Boston Children’s Hospital / JosephBarillari|Wikipedia|CC BY-SA 3.0

Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Aug 19, 2022 / 16:56 pm (CNA).

After over a week of intense backlash, Boston Children’s Hospital removed language from their website that said the hospital’s youth gender program offered irreversible, sterilizing genital surgeries for patients as young as 17.

Until August 12, the hospital stated that to qualify for a vaginoplasty, patients must be “at least 17 years old.”

But after the hospital’s own videos describing these gender procedures went viral on social media, Boston Children’s removed the reference to 17-year-olds and updated their website to say patients must be 18 years of age to qualify. 

The hospital also removed its entire playlist of videos featuring Boston surgeons describing the procedures on YouTube. 

In one of these videos, a hospital social worker confirmed that genital surgeries at the hospital “are started at age 17 for very few…for where it’s really appropriate.” 

Hospital “trying to cover up” surgeries on minors 

Chris Elston, widely known as “Billboard Chris,” is one activist and father of two who helped highlight Boston Children’s gender program on Twitter in the first place. 

Elston, who travels across North America taking a stand against transgender ideology and how it harms children, told CNA Friday that the website reversal proves the hospital is “trying to cover up that they performed genital surgeries on minors.” 

“Why are they hiding their videos, changing their website, and lying to the media?” he asked. 

Elston noted Boston Children’s adherence to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH) guidelines on gender surgeries for children, which the hospital admits on its website.

“The new WPATH Standards of Care call for womb removal and castration of 17-year-olds,” Elston said, pointing to the association’s updates on how early sex-change surgeries can be performed on minors. 

WPATH’s new guidelines state that hospitals can begin offering “most genital surgeries starting at age 17, including womb and testicle removal.” 

Hospital and media “condemn attacks” on gender program

On Aug. 16, Boston Children’s issued a public statement denying that the gender program provides genital surgeries for 17-year-olds and condemned the backlash the hospital has received since the videos went viral.

Citing “hostile” threats based on “misinformation,” the hospital wrote, “We condemn these attacks in the strongest possible terms, and we reject the false narrative upon which they have been based.”

President and CEO of the hospital, Kevin Churchwell, sent an email to the entire hospital staff on Friday referring to the outcry as “false claims” and “hateful commentary.” 

Massachusetts Attorney General Rachael S. Rollins issued a press release Aug. 17 saying her administration was investigating “alleged threats” made to the hospital’s gender program, classifying them as “hate crimes.”

“I will not sit idly by and allow hate-based criminal activity to continue in our District,” Rollins said.

Boston Children’s Hospital did not respond to CNA’s request for comment at the time of publishing. 

[…]

Lake Charles, La., Sep 6, 2017 / 03:57 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A non-profit group dedicated to studying and explaining the effects of the sexual revolution claims that its ability to process donations online was cancelled because of its views on sexuality.

“The Ruth Institute’s primary focus is family breakdown and its impact on children: understanding it, healing it, ending it. If this makes us a ‘hate group,’ so be it,” Dr. Jennifer Roback Morse, founder of the Ruth Institute, said on Friday.

Morse said that on Aug. 31 she received a letter from Vanco Payments, which processed the Ruth Institute’s donations online, telling her that the service would be discontinued that day.

The reason Vanco gave for cutting their service was that the Ruth Institute “has been flagged by Card Brands as being affiliated with a product/service that promotes hate, violence, harassment and/or abuse. Merchants that display such attributes are against Vanco and Wells Fargo processing policies.”

“We surmise that Vanco dropped us because we hold views about marriage, family and human sexuality that are considered ‘Anti-LGBT’,” Morse said.

Vanco did not reach out to discuss or inquire about allegations that the institute “promoted hate, violence, harassment, and/or abuse,” prior to sending the Ruth Institute a notice that service was being terminated, she said.

“We’ve never had any incidents or problems” with Vanco, Morse told CNA of their years-long relationship with the payment service. She said that the sudden termination of service without any prior notice was “rude” and “uncivil.”

Asked about the decision to cut ties with the Ruth Institute, a Vanco representative on Sept. 1 told CNA, “Vanco depends on the assessment of its banking partners to guide its decisions on continuing customer relationships that those partners believe violate processing policies. Accordingly, based on that assessment, we terminated our processing relationship with the Ruth Institute on Thursday, August 31.”

On Sept. 5, the representative retracted that statement, and issued a new statement saying, “Vanco terminated its processing relationship with the Ruth Institute on Thursday, August 31. Otherwise, we have no additional comment on the issue.”

Vanco did not specify how it had determined that the Ruth Institute “promoted hate, violence, harassment, and/or abuse,” Morse said. However, groups including the Human Rights Campaign, GLAAD, and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have criticized the Ruth Institute’s stance against same-sex marriage.

The SPLC was founded in 1971 and originally monitored persons and groups fighting the civil rights movement. It began to track racist and white supremacist groups like neo-Nazis and affiliates of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1980s. It also claims to monitor other “extremist” groups like “anti-immigrant” and “anti-Muslim” groups.

More recently, the SPLC has listed mainstream Christian groups like the Family Research Council and Alliance Defending Freedom as “hate groups” for their “anti-LGBT” stance. The Ruth Institute has also been included in this list by SPLC.

The Ruth Institute has faced consequences for this designation. Morse told the National Catholic Register that the institute was denied its application for the “Amazon Smile” program, which sends portions of purchases to charities in the program, because of the SPLC’s “hate” designation.

SPLC has recently faced questions regarding its financial administration, after reports that the non-profit has transferred millions of dollars to offshore accounts and investment firms.

Morse voiced concern that one group like SPLC holds so much power in the public sphere for its designations.

Still, she said, the Ruth Institute will not be deterred in its mission of speaking out against “the sexual revolution in all its forms” – from divorce to the hookup culture to same-sex marriage – because these things are harmful to the human person.

“What the sexual revolution promotes is irrational,” she said.

[…]