Free Republic

Just one example of how the secular media is going to spin, spin, and spin some more in the quest to provide cover for pro-abort, pro-homosexual politicians. (us.fotolia.com/JJAVA) UPDATED (9:15pm, Pacific; July 22): Sen. Kaine has been chosen to be Hillary Clinton's running mate. In the meantime, CWR's managing editor, Catherine Harmon, reminded me of this interesting story from last year:  U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine, a practicing Catholic and former missionary, had a clear message Wednesday for Pope Francis: Allow women to become priests. Kaine said ending the church's centuries-old rule that only men can be ordained would be the most significant...

July 23, 2016 Saturday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 Jer 7:1-11 The following message came to Jeremiah from the LORD:Stand at the gate of the house of the LORD,and there proclaim this message:Hear the word of the LORD, all you of Judahwho enter these gates to worship the LORD!Thus says the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel:Reform your ways and your deeds,so that I may remain with you in this place.Put not your trust in the deceitful words:“This is the temple of the LORD!The temple of the LORD! The temple of the LORD!”Only if...

John Nienstedt, the former archbishop of the Archdiocese of Minneapolis and St. Paul, said accusations of sexual misconduct against him were part of a false smear campaign in response to his opposition to gay marriage. Nienstedt’s denial came in a statement Wednesday night, first issued to KSTP and Minnesota Public Radio. That followed the release of internal church documents alleging the Vatican had sought to derail an independent investigation that turned up credible evidence against him. Nienstedt resigned last year as archbishop and returned to his home state of Michigan. He was briefly involved with a diocese there but left...

Pope Francis reaffirmed the Vatican’s support for the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at a June pontifical conference on human trafficking that featured an address by abortion and population control advocate Jeffrey Sachs. “We can also count an important and decisive collaboration with the United Nations,” the Holy Father told the Judges Summit Against Human Trafficking and Organized Crime, organized by the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences. Added the pope: “I am grateful for the fact that the representatives of the 193 UN member states unanimously approved the new Sustainable Development Goals.” In his turn, Sachs, a Harvard-educated economist, bestselling...

It’s election season, and I’ve hesitated to say much on the subject for many reasons. One of those reasons is because our obsession with politics is unhealthy and unholy (in that it reflects our fixation on this life rather than the next, and on worldly power instead of true discipleship). Another is that this election season has been like watching a slow-burning dumpster fire. I don’t plan to tell you how to vote, but I do want to establish a few basic principles: No well-formed Catholic should feel comfortable with Trump or Clinton; Thus, voters face a difficult decision this...

The head of the Syriac Catholic Church—an Eastern Catholic Church in full communion with the Holy See—offered strong criticism of “American, French, English, [and] European Union politicians” whose efforts to remove President Bashar al-Assad have led to a nightmare for the region’s Christians. Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Yonan told the National Catholic Register that Syria was a place “where they were fighting against illiteracy, where you had medical care for all, a peaceful country, where you could go wherever you wanted to go, 24 hours a day without any problem — they [the Western powers] find it has a dictatorship...

Why is Original Sin Called the “Sin of Adam”? Msgr. Charles Pope • July 21, 2016 • Original sin is that first sin of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, committed when they ate the forbidden fruit of the Tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Gen 3:1-7). And while it clearly involved both of them, Scripture and Tradition refer to it formally as the “Sin of Adam” or “Adam’s Sin,” not the “Sin of Adam and Eve.” It is also described as coming to us “through one man,” not “through a man and a woman.”...

Every institute of contemplative women religious will have to revise its constitutions in light of the new documentIn an effort to help contemplative women religious renew their life and mission in the Church and the world, Pope Francis has issued a series of new rulings dealing with formation, assets, prayer life, authority and autonomy. The new rulings include a mandate that “initially, all monasteries are to be part of a federation” based on “an affinity of spirit and traditions” with the aim of facilitating formation and meeting needs through sharing assets and exchanging members. Monasteries voting for an exception from...

“Education,” according to Plato’s Socrates, “is not what the professions of certain men assert it to be”—it is not the putting of knowledge into the soul “as though [one] were putting sight into blind eyes.” Rather, education is the art of turning souls around so that our natural human powers, directed toward “what really is,” may “couple” with reality and give birth to intelligence, truth, and justice. Though it involves human interaction, what defines education is the reorientation by which it facilitates a union between the human and the superhuman. A closely analogous dynamic is—or should be—at the heart of...

July 22, 2016 Feast of Saint Mary Magdalene Reading 1 SGS 3:1-4b The Bride says:On my bed at night I sought himwhom my heart loves–I sought him but I did not find him.I will rise then and go about the city;in the streets and crossings I will seekHim whom my heart loves.I sought him but I did not find him.The watchmen came upon me,as they made their rounds of the city:Have you seen him whom my heart loves?I had hardly left themwhen I found him whom my heart loves. OR 2 cor 5:14-17 Brothers and sisters:The love of Christ...

The idyll between Francis and the followers of Luther. The alarm of cardinals and bishops against the “Protestantization” of the Catholic Church. But also the distrust of authoritative Lutheran theologians by Sandro Magister ROME, July 22, 2016 - In the alarmed letter that thirteen cardinals from five continents were preparing to deliver to Pope Francis at the beginning of the last synod, they were warning him against leading the Catholic Church as well to “the collapse of liberal Protestant churches in the modern era, accelerated by their abandonment of key elements of Christian belief and practice in the name of...

Concerns are growing for the future of Christians in Turkey, the birthplace of St Paul, in the wake of the failed coup. Two churches in eastern Turkey in places already known for historic murders of Christians were vandalised during the attempted coup, reports Middle East Concern. In Trabzon on the Black Sea, ten people attacked the Catholic church of Santa Maria where Catholic priest Father Andrea Santoro was murdered in 2006. Muslim neighbours intervened and drove them away. In Malatya, where three Christian workers were murdered in 2007, there was an attempt to smash the windows of the Protestant Church....

Amid heightened tensions over ISIS-fueled terror attacks and anti-Muslim rhetoric, a prominent U.S. cardinal says Islam “wants to govern the world” and Americans must decide if they are going to reassert “the Christian origin of our own nation” in order to avoid that fate. Cardinal Raymond Burke, a Rome-based prelate known as an outspoken conservative and critic of Pope Francis’ reformist approach, said in an interview on Wednesday (July 20) that Islam is “fundamentally a form of government.” While Catholic teaching recognizes that all Abrahamic faiths worship the same God, Burke criticized Catholic leaders who, in an effort to be...

(RNS) Amid heightened tensions over ISIS-fueled terror attacks and anti-Muslim rhetoric, a prominent U.S. cardinal says Islam “wants to govern the world” and Americans must decide if they are going to reassert “the Christian origin of our own nation” in order to avoid that fate. Cardinal Raymond Burke, a Rome-based prelate known as an outspoken conservative and critic of Pope Francis’ reformist approach, said in an interview on Wednesday (July 20) that Islam is “fundamentally a form of government.” While Catholic teaching recognizes that all Abrahamic faiths worship the same God, Burke criticized Catholic leaders who, in an effort to...

Could The Time Be Ripe for The Great Monarch? Is He Here Among Us Now? by Sandra Airey I'm a Catholic born in 1947, raised in a family with many devout Catholics, and taught by pre-Vatican II nuns for 12 years. My life has been unusual for more than one reason. I was born the second child to a woman with Rh negative blood and a severe heart defect. I ended up with minimal brain damage ( causing partial seizures affecting awareness ) and connective tissue disease. My mother knowing about the circumstances of my birth was aware that I...

Even as Pope Francis wins the applause of the world for giving Catholicism a friendlier face, critics have started to grumble. On social media and in opinion columns, they have drawn up a list of grievances. While they approve of his pastoral outreach, they are concerned that he is leaving the Church unprepared to face the challenges of our age. They admire many of the men he has promoted, but fret that he has also empowered bishops who want to lead the Church on a dangerous, radical course – and may well do so once he departs. No, these critics...

New details have emerged about the letter 45 theologians sent to every Catholic patriarch and cardinal asking them to petition Pope Francis to fix a list of erroneous propositions in Amoris Laetitia. The group’s spokesman Dr. Joseph Shaw, a University of Oxford academic and chairman of the Latin Mass Society, told LifeSiteNews that the list of signatories is not in any way limited to theologians who are viewed as liturgical traditionalists, thus showing that there is wide concern about Amoris Laetitia across the world of Catholic academia. Upon the announcement of the existence the letter, Shaw said, “Numerous propositions in...

Our Most Primal Fear and the Source of Our Bondage Msgr. Charles Pope • July 20, 2016 • Let’s ponder a significant yet often overlooked text from Hebrews, which describes our most basic and primal fear. Our inordinate fear of what people think of us is rooted in an even deeper fear, one which is at the very core of our being. The Hebrews text both names it and describes it as being the source of our bondage. In order to unlock the secret of the text, I want to suggest to you an interpretation that will allow its...

July 21, 2016 Thursday of the Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 Jer 2:1-3, 7-8, 12-13 This word of the LORD came to me:Go, cry out this message for Jerusalem to hear! I remember the devotion of your youth,how you loved me as a bride,Following me in the desert,in a land unsown.Sacred to the LORD was Israel,the first fruits of his harvest;Should any presume to partake of them,evil would befall them, says the LORD. When I brought you into the garden land to eat its goodly fruits,You entered and defiled my land,you made my heritage loathsome.The priests asked...

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano has published a front-page essay by Rocco Buttiglione, the Italian political leader and adviser to St. John Paul II, supporting the argument of Amoris Laetitia that Catholics who are divorced and remarried might, under some circumstances, be allowed to receive Communion. Buttiglione argues that the Catholic Church has always recognized the possibility that individual circumstances determine whether or not someone is in a state of sin. He writes: The path that the Pope proposes to divorced and remarried is exactly the same that the Church proposes to all sinners: Go to confession, and your confessor,...