[ARTICLE] Sen. Hawley Says MLB Admits Error in Warning Giants Players Over Bible Verses The MLB commissioner said in a letter that the Giants did not adequately inform the players that ‘gay pride’ caps were optional, Hawley said. Giants jersey (photo: Unsplash) Tyler Arnold/EWTN News English Nation June 23, 2026 Major League Baseball (MLB) will not punish the three San Francisco Giants players who wrote Bible verses on their caps during the team’s gay pride celebrations and blamed the incident on poor communication from the franchise, according to Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri. Hawley posted a letter on X, which he said he received from MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred after the senator accused the league of discrimination and the Department of Justice (DOJ) opened an investigation into the matter. The incident stemmed from the Giants’ June 12 “Pride Night,” in which most players wore caps that infused a gay pride rainbow into the team logo. Three players inscribed Bible verses on the caps, with one referencing Genesis 9:12-16, in which God tells Noah the rainbow is “the sign of the covenant that I am making between me and you and every living creature with you for all ages to come” and promises to never flood the entire Earth again. After the game, the Giants apologized for the players causing “pain and anger to many in the LGBTQ+ community” and the MLB issued warnings, which Manfred said was simply enforcing its content-neutral prohibition on writing messages on uniforms. In the letter Hawley posted, Manfred said players cannot be forced to wear the pride-inspired uniform, but blamed the Giants for not properly communicating to players that it is optional. He said “the Giants’ communication with players was inadequate and not clear” but the MLB warnings to the players were delivered before the league became aware of that. “Some players apparently did not understand that they had the option to wear their normal uniform and elected to add messages to their hats bearing the pride logo as a result,” the commissioner added. He said the players “were neither fined nor disciplined, nor will they ever be.” He said the MLB “believes in the right of our players and fans to express their religious beliefs and at the same time supports the communities in this country that are fans of our clubs, including the LGBTQ community.” “We believe that a policy permitting our clubs to celebrate or honor segments of its fanbase, yet does not require players or other on-field personnel to directly participate in the celebration in ways that makes them uncomfortable, strikes the right balance,” he wrote. Neither the MLB nor the Giants responded to requests for comment from EWTN News about the letter. Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division of the DOJ, sent a letter to Manfred last week to inform him that the DOJ will use all available means to hold employers accountable for any discrimination against Christians and that the incident was referred to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). In spite of the MLB’s position that the policy banning written messages is content-neutral, the DOJ letter contends that the league has a “double standard” when it comes to enforcement, noting that players were allowed to wear “Black Lives Matter” messages in spite of the general prohibition. This incident came less than a month after the Washington Nationals fired Sean Hudson, its former director of community relations, for saying the team tries to avoid the inclusion of pitcher Trevor Williams in promotional materials because of his Catholic faith. Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colorado, urged the Justice Department to reexamine the MLB’s antitrust exemption because of the incident and to investigate potential patterns of discriminatory actions. Keywords: faith and baseball major league baseball Toggle Comments Show Comments
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Source URL: https://www.ncregister.com/cna/hawley-on-mlb-giants]
[Antichurch] The MLB’s Rainbow Covenant: How Naturalistic “Inclusion” Trumps Divine Truth
EWTN News reports on a revealing clash between the naturalistic ideology of “inclusion” and the remnants of Christian conscience in American public life. The incident, involving Major League Baseball’s San Francisco Giants, exposes the profound spiritual bankruptcy of a society that has enthroned subjective sentiment over revealed truth. While the worldly details concern sports, the underlying battle is between the duty to profess God’s law and the tyrannical demands of a neo-pagan cult of “diversity.”
The Primacy of Sentiment Over Truth
The core of the conflict lies in the MLB’s enforcement of “Pride Night” celebrations, where players were pressured to wear caps infused with the gay pride rainbow. Three players, exercising a residual natural law instinct, inscribed Bible verses on their caps, one referencing Genesis 9:12-16. This passage is profoundly significant: it establishes the rainbow as a sign of God’s covenant with Noah, a divine promise of mercy and preservation. To appropriate this sacred symbol for a celebration of acts condemned by Divine Law is not merely a difference of opinion; it is a blasphemous inversion, a semiotic hijacking of a divine sign for a profane agenda.
The reaction of the Giants’ management is a textbook example of the modernist surrender to scandal. The team apologized for the players causing “pain and anger to many in the LGBTQ+ community.” This apology reveals the complete inversion of Catholic morality. The modern world teaches that causing subjective “pain” is the greatest evil, while the objective offense against God is irrelevant. The Giants, like virtually all major corporations, have fully imbibed the spirit of the world, where the feelings of those who embrace disordered ideologies are prioritized over the eternal truths of faith. As the Syllabus of Errors condemns, this is the error of indifferentism and latitudinarianism, where all opinions are placed on the same level, provided they do not challenge the reigning secular orthodoxy of “inclusion.”
The “Content-Neutral” Canard and the Double Standard
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred’s defense is a masterpiece of bureaucratic evasion. He claimed the league was simply enforcing a “content-neutral prohibition on writing messages on uniforms.” This legalistic fig leaf is torn apart by the DOJ’s own observation of a glaring double standard. The league permitted players to wear “Black Lives Matter” messages on their uniforms, a political statement par excellence. This exposes the so-called “content-neutral” rule as a sham, a tool to be wielded selectively against any expression that challenges the left-wing cultural revolution while protecting its sacred dogmas.
This is the very essence of the modernist tyranny: the application of arbitrary power under the guise of procedural fairness. The Church has always taught that law must be ordered to the common good, which is inseparable from Divine Law. A “neutrality” that silences the truth while amplifying error is not neutrality; it is complicity with error. The players were disciplined not for the content of their message per se, but for the source of their message—the eternal Word of God, which stands in judgment over all modern ideologies.
The False “Right” to Express Religious Belief
Commissioner Manfred’s statement is a perfect specimen of modernist doublethink: “We believe in the right of our players and fans to express their religious beliefs and at the same time supports the communities in this country that are fans of our clubs, including the LGBTQ community.” This sentence posits a false equivalence between the objective expression of religious truth and the subjective celebration of a disordered lifestyle. The Catholic position is clear: there is no right to publicly celebrate what God condemns. The “right to express religious beliefs” is only authentic when it is exercised in conformity with the truth and does not cause scandal. In the modernist framework, however, “religious belief” is reduced to a private, subjective feeling that must never challenge the public square’s new orthodoxy. The players’ quiet inscription of a Bible verse was treated as a disruptive act because it implicitly challenged the narrative of the “Pride” celebration.
This aligns with the spirit of the age condemned by Pope Pius XI in Quas Primas, where he lamented that “the hope of lasting peace will not yet shine upon nations as long as individuals and states renounce and do not wish to recognize the reign of our Savior.” The MLB, like the secular state, desires a peace that comes from the suppression of Christ’s kingship in public life. The “peace” offered is the peace of silence, the peace of a tomb where truth is buried under a consensus of naturalistic sentiment.
The Deeper Apostasy: A Symptom of the Post-Conciliar Landscape
This incident is not an isolated event but a symptom of the deep apostasy that has infected the West. The modernist church, with its religious liberty and false ecumenism, has paved the way for this exact scenario. By teaching that the Church must “reconcile herself… with progress, liberalism and modern civilization” (as condemned in the Syllabus, proposition 80), the conciliar revolution has dismantled the theological resistance to this cultural Marxism. The result is a society where a Catholic baseball player can be reprimanded for quietly citing Genesis, while the entire institutional apparatus celebrates a symbol of the very depravity that Genesis warns against.
The firing of Sean Hudson by the Washington Nationals for his Catholic faith, mentioned in the article, further confirms the pattern. The “inclusive” cult of Antichrist demands absolute conformity. There is no “live and let live.” There is only submission or persecution. The DOJ’s involvement, while potentially a political tool, highlights the tragic reality: the natural law is now so obscured that the faithful must appeal to secular civil rights law for the simple privilege of not being fired for believing the Bible.
Conclusion: The Inevitable Conflict
The MLB’s “Pride Night” debacle is a microcosm of the irreconcilable conflict between the City of God and the City of Man. The players who wrote the Bible verses, however imperfectly, made a small public confession of faith. The reaction they received is a prophecy of what awaits all who refuse to bow before the idols of the modern world. The Church teaches that the state must publicly acknowledge Christ the King. When it instead mandates the celebration of His enemies’ ideologies, persecution is the inevitable fruit. This incident is a call to reject the false “tolerance” of the world and to profess, clearly and without apology, the unchanging truth that the rainbow is a sign of God’s covenant, not a banner for Sodom.
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Sen. Hawley Says MLB Admits Error in Warning Giants Players Over Bible Verses (ncregister.com)
Date: 23.06.2026