Free Republic

It all started in June 2018, when Quillette published my article, “Why Women Don’t Code,” and things picked up steam when Jordan Peterson shared a link to the article on his Twitter account. A burst of outrage and press coverage followed which I discussed in a follow-up piece. The original article was one of the ten most read pieces published by Quillette in 2018, and continues to generate interest. A recent YouTube video about it has been viewed over 120,000 times, as of this writing: In his tweet promoting my article, Peterson took issue with one of my claims. I...

During the advent of my first pregnancy, in 2012, I was comfortably settled into my own unique brand of postmodern feminist Christianity. I remember lounging on the couch amidst waves of debilitating nausea, watching news coverage of the controversial Contraceptive Mandate, rolling my eyes in anger and disgust at those regressive Catholic priests in their prim white collars, telling women what to do with their bodies. Yet almost exactly two years later, I would be standing before such a priest at the Easter Vigil Mass, publicly confessing my desire to be received into the largest, oldest male-helmed institution in...

The secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Giacomo Morandi, said Friday that a new document by the Pontifical Biblical Commission does not give an “opening” to the validity of so-called same-sex unions. Morandi referred to the book-length document “Che Cosa E’ L’Uomo? Un itinerio di antropologia biblica” (“What is Man? An Itinerary of Biblical Anthropology”) published by the Vatican as an Italian-language book Dec. 16. The report was written over several years by the Pontifical Biblical Commission, which is a part of the CDF, and aims to provide a study of the whole of...

`Please go to @ChickfilA and give them a piece of your chicken-pluckin' mind. It's claimed their "followers" dropped by 10%, or 110,000 over the past 4 weeks. (I think in general, stats about Twitter followers are highly manipulable and highly suspect, but let's just go with that.) Anyhow, I have been sending them lots of messages about how bad they are for selling out to the bullies in the LGBT activist organizations. They are getting beat up by angryy conservative (ex)customers, especially for dropping Salvation Army, an act of foul treachery. As of now, I think their customer comment tweets...

I was just listening to Paul Brady's "Nothing but the Same Old Story" and I flashed on what's going on in the Catholic Church: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QgaIAzWW2zc "Nothing But the Same Old Story" The lyrics have evocative lines: Paul Brady lyrics I'm thinking of a cri de coeur from a priest who entered the Catholic priesthood with the hope of holiness and an honest life for God, then got waylaid by the corruption at the top, the cynicism at the bottom, the scorn from all the worldly of the world--- thought about being a saint, himself, speaking out boldly, paying up personally...

Monsignor Bux calls for @Card_R_Sarah (prefect of the Congregation of Divine Worship) to “perform an exorcism” to reconsecrate Santa Maria in Transpotina and St Peter’s, after Pachamama rituals/processions took place, last month. That's all I know. I took the URL and ran it through Google Translate to get the whole article translated, and here it is in that garble known as Google English (touched up just a bit for bare intelligibility). To exorcise, to purify it from the idols, the Basilica of St. Peter: this is the clamorous proposal of the counselor of Pope Ratzinger, the well-known theologian Monsignor Nicola...

As more and more Americans grow disillusioned with the democratic process, an increasing number of voters are throwing their support behind Aragorn II, Son of Arathorn, King of Gondor. While the candidates on the ballot all received a fair number of votes, the largest voting bloc simply wrote in "Hail Aragorn, Son of Arathorn, the rightful heir to the throne of Gondor! We owe him our allegiance!" The monarch seems to have won support among American voters through his impeccable personal character, strong military service, and "dope" sword fighting ability. "Some other candidates have good policies and decent track...

When it comes to Catholic demographics — think birth rate, membership and new clergy — researchers know where to look if they want to find the good news and the bad news. It you are seeking new life and growth, all roads lead to Africa — where the Catholic population has grown by nearly 250% since 1980. Anyone seeking bad news can examine trends in Europe. Take Germany, for example. The Catholic church lost 216,078 members in 2018, according to the German Bishops’ Conference. Researchers at the University of Freiburg predict that Catholic membership totals will fall another 50% by...

I find I can't get onto my Twitter account, or anybody else's. Not via friends, followers, or links... What do I do?

A few days ago men removed some female figurines (centerpieces for several weird ceremonies in Rome the last few weeks) from a church and tossed them into the Tiber River. Vatican spokesman Paolo Ruffini dismissed the act as a “stunt”. Regardless of how one assess this act, however, I think it not accurate to describe it as a mere “stunt”. A “stunt” is a gesture that calls attention to a problem but does not itself solve the problem. For example, chaining oneself to a lamppost could call attention to the plight of the unjustly imprisoned but does not itself free...

Unknown vandals destroyed 40 of 61 pro-life memorial crosses and stacked them in two piles on Oct. 12 at Our Lady of Guadalupe Catholic Church in Buckingham, Pa. The crosses commemorate the millions of unborn children killed since the legalization of abortion after the 1973 Supreme Court decision of Roe vs. Wade. The vandals also stole two signs saying “stop surgical abortions.” Pastor Msgr. Joseph Gentili wrote a letter to his parishioners regarding the horrific incident. He explained that this crime is one of two acts of vandalism occurring on the church’s campus over the past two weeks. The first...

A former victim of a syncretistic religious ceremony in Brazil warns, “The Church must be very clear about the occult influences that form the basis of many of these native practices.” In 1968, Jane Porter, a British Catholic, was living as an undergraduate student in Brazil but after contracting an illness, she fell victim to a “false” healing carried out by an indigenous, pagan religion in a “Catholic” setting. The effects, she says, led to “far greater suffering” lasting for decades. In this interview with the Register, Porter recounts her traumatic experience and expresses her concern that the Amazon Synod’s...

A man who criticized President Donald Trump’s immigration policies in the name of progressive Christianity was killed last week by an undocumented immigrant who avoided deportation by hiding in a local “sanctuary church.” Sean Buchanan, a father of five from Colorado Springs, was driving his motorcycle on Highway 83 when Miguel Ramirez Valiente swerved into his lane and killed him. The immigrant was charged with reckless driving with a revoked license. Ramirez Valiente received national media coverage in January when he sought sanctuary in All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in Buchanan’s hometown. Speaking from the pulpit, he told assembled reporters...

The Catholic Church is heading toward an “internal papal schism” whereby Pope Francis effectively leads two opposing factions, Capuchin theologian Father Thomas Weinandy has warned. These are divided, he said, into one loyal to the papacy yet critical of this pontificate, and the other supportive of him due to his tolerance of ambiguous teaching and pastoral practice. “This is the real schism,” observed Father Weinandy, a former chief of staff for the U.S. bishops' doctrinal committee, in a commentary published today in The Catholic Thing. It is a situation “ever growing in intensity,” he added. A member of the Vatican’s...

To be sworn to by all clergy, pastors, confessors, preachers, religious superiors, and professors in philosophical-theological seminaries. I firmly embrace and accept each and every definition that has been set forth and declared by the unerring teaching authority of the Church, especially those principal truths which are directly opposed to the errors of this day. And first of all, I profess that God, the origin and end of all things, can be known with certainty by the natural light of reason from the created world (see Rom. 1:90), that is, from the visible works of creation, as a cause from...

Famed eighth century missionary Saint Boniface appeared at the Vatican yesterday for the kickoff of the Amazonian Synod. Reading from the working document, the moderator was saying, For the indigenous peoples of the Amazon Basin, the good life comes from living in communion with other people, with the world, with the creatures of their environment, and with the Creator. Indigenous peoples, in fact, live within the home that God created and gave them as a gift: the Earth. Their diverse spiritualities and beliefs motivate them to live in communion with the soil, water, trees, animals, and with day and...

When it comes to criticizing the press, William Donohue is what he is. The president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights has never used a flyswatter when a baseball bat will do. This time, Donohue has released a statement about a USA Today story that had already caught my attention, one that ran with this headline: “The Catholic Church and Boy Scouts are lobbying against child abuse statutes. This is their playbook.” This feature is yet another cheap-shot attack that buries or blurs crucial information that readers need in order to understand this complex subject. How? Here...

Communist Chinese officials have forced one of the largest Protestant groups in the world, the government-sanctioned Three-Self Church, to remove all images of the Ten Commandments from its churches and replace them with quotes and pictures of authoritarian President Xi Jinping and former dictator Mao Zedong, according to Fox News.com. The Chinese regime is cracking down on all religions and forcing them to implement -- "sinicize" -- the socialist teachings of the Communist Party into their faith and religious practices. "The state-sanctioned Three-Self Church -- one of the largest Protestant bodies in the world -- has removed the Ten Commandments...

The realm of practical politics is eminently a realm of conflict, if not hatred. It crowds out culture. It relegates the human things to the last remaining cubicles of privacy, but even these are invaded by social media. Many years ago, when I was teaching at Providence College, I showed up for a meeting of the faculty senate. That was rare for me. I loathe campus politics. But a friend of mine had put forward a proposal for a program in Classics, and I attended to lend my support. It turned out that on the same day, a professor of...

Flanked by banners of the four evangelists, and gathered under the patronage of the Blessed Virgin Mary, an international coalition of 200 Catholic laity today assembled in silence near St. Peter’s Square, to pray “as a united army against the enemies of God and the Church.” Standing at the foot of Castel Sant’Angelo on the eve of the liturgical feast of St. Michael the Archangel, the international lay coalition launched an “appeal to the angels against the evil spirits” ahead of the Amazonian Synod being held at the Vatican Oct. 6-27. LifeSite also learned that another act of spiritual...