Free Republic

"Ahmed, who is a professor at Middlesex University, was asked about the phrase “so-called Islamic State.” His answer was enlightening: “I hear so many people say ISIS has nothing to do with Islam—of course it has. They are not preaching Judaism. It might be wrong but what they are saying is an ideology based on some form of Islamic doctrine.” He added that the Islamic nature of ISIS is “a fact and we have to get our head around some very uncomfortable things.”

Strasbourg, France — The European Parliament on Thursday declared that genocide is taking place in the Middle East against Christians, Yazidis and other ethnic and religious minorities at the hands of the Islamic State. ... Such a declaration is significant because it calls for members of the United Nations Security Council to refer the matter to the International Criminal Court, which would officially investigate to see if genocide is taking place.

We – every one of us – has to up the game now, pull in that reluctant friend, make someone who wants to avert his gaze face what’s going on. No euphemisms. No excuses. No no-shows. A society that allows – underwrites with tax dollars – an outfit like PP has let the barbarians inside the gates. Our president, a cheerleader for this barbarism, has asked God to bless PP.

The Supreme Court’s bizarre decision to impose same-sex “marriage” on all the States is the making of history by the breaking of history. It is to make something that humanity has never sanctioned and has always shunned not only legal but compulsory. Until a few short years ago, the very thought that marriage was anything other than the union of a man and a woman would have been impossible because the very thought would have been unthinkable. The Supreme Court has, therefore, divorced itself from the collective experience of humanity as manifested in the continuum of moral norms that are...

Today Archbishop Kurtz issued a statement about the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling, calling it a “tragic error that harms the common good and most vulnerable among us.” Read the full statement here. Archbishop Kurtz compared the decision to Roe v. Wade and how it doesn’t change the truth- which is “unchanged and unchangeable.” He continues on to say that, “Neither decision is rooted in the truth, and as a result, both will eventually fail. Today the Court is wrong again. It is profoundly immoral and unjust for the government to declare that two people of the same sex can constitute...

In investigating the validity of a marriage, ecclesial judges should consider whether the decision to marry was made in the context of values and faith ... Francis stressed “the crisis of values in society” is not a recent phenomenon, quoting Blessed Paul VI’s 1974 address opening the Rota’s judicial year, modern man “at times, wounded by a systematic relativism that bends to the easiest choices of circumstance, of demagogy, of fashion, of passion, of hedonism, of selfishness, so that externally he attempts to dispute the mastery of the law, and internally, almost without realizing, substitutes the empire of moral conscience...

The Francis Filtration began in earnest during the impromptu press conference on the papal plane while the Pope was en route home from World Youth Day 2013 in Rio de Janeiro. That was the presser that produced the single-most quoted line of the pontificate thus far: “Who am I to judge?” But as retired Cardinal Francis George of Chicago pointed out in a pre-retirement interview with John Allen, that sound bite “has been very misused … because he was talking about someone who has already asked for mercy and been given absolution. … That’s entirely different than talking [about] someone...

On the evening of Sept. 12, 2006, my wife and I were dining in Cracow with Polish friends when an agitated Italian Vaticanista (pardon the redundancy in adjectives) called, demanding to know what I thought of “Zees crazee speech of zee pope about zee Muslims.” That was my first hint that the herd of independent minds in the world press was about to go ballistic on the subject of Benedict XVI’s Regensburg Lecture: a “gaffe”-bone on which the media continued to gnaw until the end of Benedict’s pontificate. Eight years later, the Regensburg Lecture looks a lot different. Indeed, those...

Is Islam inherently violent? Does it justify violence against infidels? Does it encourage the faith to be spread by the sword? The establishment of an “Islamic State” in northern Iraq this summer has brought such questions to the forefront in the face of the lethal brutality the Islamic State has unleashed against religious minorities, including the expulsion and killing of Christians. There are political and military aspects to those questions, but they are most fundamentally theological. Does God desire violence to spread his revelation? Theology addresses reality at its deepest level, and, therefore, theological ideas matter a great deal in...

Stated simply, the paradox is that, although Roman Catholicism constitutes the largest religious and cultural group in the United States, Catholicism currently enjoys almost no positive presence in the American fine arts—not in literature, music, sculpture, or painting. This situation not only represents a demographic paradox. It also marks a major historical change—an impoverishment, indeed even a disfigurement—for Catholicism, which has for two millennia played a hugely formative and inspirational role in the arts. ... Roman Catholicism now ranks overwhelmingly as the largest religious denomination in the United States, with more than sixty-eight million members. ...

Dear Friend, At the presidential debate on Wednesday night, Governor Romney revealed President Obama’s tired rhetoric for what it is: a weak attempt to mask a record of failure. But the first signs that the President's luck was about to change didn’t come with Governor Romney’s excellent performance on Wednesday — they came in that morning’s New York Times. As a left-wing president, you know you’re in trouble when you’ve lost liberal columnist, Maureen Dowd, on national security. On op-ed page of Wednesday’s Times, Dowd alleged that “The Obama administration sidestepped Al Qaeda ties in the case of the Libyan...

The Obama administration, in its never-ending quest to embarrass itself and America, has insulted one of the pivotal figures in ending Communism in Europe, Lech Walesa: According to the Wall Street Journal, Polish officials requested that Walesa accept the Medal of Freedom on behalf of Jan Karski, a member of the Polish Underground during World War II who was being honored posthumously this week. The request makes sense. Walesa and Karski shared a burning desire to rid Poland of tyrannical subjugation. But President Obama said no. Administration officials told the Journal that Walesa is too “political.” A man who was...

The final inversion has been seen now in the last few weeks: The Obama White House has sought to inject the issue of contraception, as it will inject later the issue of gay rights, precisely because the Republicans are so evidently averse to talking about them. And in their backing away, the Republicans have failed to cultivate any art or confidence in arguing these issues. ... The malady he [Jeffrey Bell] sees at work is the falling away, in America and Europe, from the moral teaching of the Declaration of Independence. As he reminds us, the Declaration did not derive...

When he was cardinal of Krakow and the diocese faced a problem, Karol Wojtyla used to ask those working with him: “What is the truth of faith that sheds light on this problem?” He was head of a large diocese and yet he could work from the mind of the Church. In contrast, there are the memorable words of Cardinal Cushing (1895-1970), archbishop of Boston, to Catholic political leaders: “If your constituents want this legislation, vote for it.” A blank check for Catholic politicians – and by extension for every other Catholic – to go with what society believes rather...

In a SPIEGEL interview, former United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice discusses America's fight for German reunification, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's woes at the time, Chancellor Helmut Kohl's merits and the later mistakes of his successor, Gerhard Schröder.

The Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, and the Constitution of the United States of America—those were the three texts in the blue pamphlet I found on the table in front of me as I took my seat at a conference at Princeton. On the cover was the logo of the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy, an influential organization whose boardmembers include former New York Times Supreme Court reporter Linda Greenhouse, controversial Obama judicial nominee Goodwin Liu, former New York governor Mario Cuomo, former solicitors general Drew Days and Walter Dellinger, and former attorney general Janet Reno. The...

veryone talks these days about the need for dialogue with Islam, perhaps no religious group more insistently than the Catholic Church. As many critics have pointed out, however, you only have real dialogue when both sides are quite candid about what they believe and what acts they encourage. Given the foreignness of Islam for most Westerners, it is often difficult to make reliable judgments in such matters. But at present, such judgments are desperately needed. In her book Cruel and Usual Punishment, Nonie Darwish makes the rather stunning claim that Islam is not a religion. Darwish, the daughter of an...

To screen passengers as persons would reduce costs and inconvenience very greatly, because entire categories of passengers could be waived through with a rapid examination of travel documents and a few random checks now and then. These include a variety of easily recognizable groups that not even the most ingenious terrorists could simulate: touring senior citizens traveling together (a category that contains a good portion of all American, European and East Asian tourist traffic), airline flying personnel who come to the security gate as a crew, families complete with children, and more. In each case, the critical procedure would be...

The top two vote-getters in Sunday's Ukrainian presidential election are often stereotyped as the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovch and pro-Western Yulia Tymoshenko. They face a run-off on February 7. The orientation of Ukraine's next president is of particular interest to the country's immediate neighbors - Russia and Poland. The pro-Western positions of Yulia Tymoshenko are well-established. But a foreign policy statement aired on Ukrainian television after Viktor Yanukovych's election victory Sunday indicates he may also pursue Ukrainian integration with Europe. Mr. Yanukovych says renewing a full-fledged partnership with Russia will be one of his priorities, as will a mutually beneficial partnership...

How can there be a generation of souls wholly indifferent to this delicate thread that exists in each of us and that connects us backwards to the beginning and forwards to His return? But it is not just the Culture of Death that threatens the unbroken thread. There is also the Culture of Selfishness that avoids marriage and, once married, also avoids children. I am an example of the former. I did not marry until forty-seven. How did I come finally to be blessed with a wife and two children at my advanced age? How did I not break the...