Free Republic

President Barack Obama is replaying his turnout-boosting 2012 contraception fight against Christian groups by staging a pre-election fight over religion and new legal rights for gays.He’s expected to sign a regulation on July 21 that would force religious contractors to give up federal funding if they don’t submit to progressive claims that homosexuality and heterosexuality are morally equivalent, and that there’s no connection between biology and good sexual behavior.The regulation creates that fight by banning grants to groups that are reluctant to hire gay, lesbian and cross-dressing or transgender people who contradict the groups’ religious beliefs about sex.The regulation doesn’t...

Featured Term (selected at random:HUR An Israelite aide to Moses. During a battle with the Amalekites, the Israelites fought bravely so long as Moses stood on the hilltop holding aloft the staff of God. But when his arms tired and the staff wavered, the efforts of his men waned. So Aaron, his brother, and Hur seated Moses on a stone to rest him, and supported his arms to that the staff remained high and steady (Exodus 17:10-12). The battle ended triumphantly for the Israelites. Further evidence of confidence in Hur: when Yahweh summoned Moses to climb the mountain to receive...

Jews, Catholics and evangelical Christians are viewed warmly by the American public. When asked to rate each group on a “feeling thermometer” ranging from 0 to 100 – where 0 reflects the coldest, most negative possible rating and 100 the warmest, most positive rating – all three groups receive an average rating of 60 or higher (63 for Jews, 62 for Catholics and 61 for evangelical Christians). And 44% of the public rates all three groups in the warmest part of the scale (67 or higher).Buddhists, Hindus and Mormons receive neutral ratings on average, ranging from 48 for Mormons to...

Catholic Charities wants to care for about 50 children from Central America at a campus in Baltimore County, seeking a role in the immigration crisis even though the consideration of other sites in Maryland has met with fierce local opposition.The organization plans to apply to federal officials to house the children at St. Vincent's Villa, a residential facility on Dulaney Valley Road, Catholic Charities head William J. McCarthy Jr. confirmed Thursday night.McCarthy said housing the children would amount to his organization doing its job. "Our role and our mission is to meet the needs of these children," he said. "This...

Mosul (Agenzia Fides) - The last Christian families still present in Mosul are leaving the city and are heading towards Erbil, Dohuk and other areas of Iraqi Kurdistan which are considered safer. This is confirmed by sources of the local Chaldean community to Fides Agency. The new exodus has accelerated in the past two days, after Sunni insurgents and militants of the Islamic Caliphate began to mark with letters of recognition the homes of Christians and Shiites. As reported by the website www.Ankawa.com, the evacuation of the last Christians is also due to the intensification of the bombing carried out...

Q: Please help me with a matter weighing on my conscience. My husband and I married in our parish church 16 years ago, but I agreed to get married there only because that’s what my parents wanted. Unlike my husband, I wasn’t really practicing my faith, I just went through the motions… gradually I had a reawakening of faith, and now am fully committed to the Catholic Church. But I’m afraid our marriage isn’t valid because I didn’t embrace concepts like indissolubility at the time of our wedding, nor did I want children, although I later changed my mind…. What...

July 18, 2014Friday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time    Reading 1 Is 38:1-6, 21-22, 7-8 When Hezekiah was mortally ill,the prophet Isaiah, son of Amoz, came and said to him:“Thus says the LORD: Put your house in order,for you are about to die; you shall not recover.”Then Hezekiah turned his face to the wall and prayed to the LORD: “O LORD, remember how faithfully and wholeheartedlyI conducted myself in your presence,doing what was pleasing to you!”And Hezekiah wept bitterly. Then the word of the LORD came to Isaiah: “Go, tell Hezekiah:Thus says the LORD, the God of...

With hindsight, we can see that the real battle in the Church of England has been with her founding principles. She was founded in the Protestant Revolution on an essentially liberal principle: that the circumstances and situation in the current culture determine the identity and mission of the church. She was now, and always has been the Church of ENGLAND. Therefore, the circumstances, personalities and cultural factors determine which way she will go. As society became increasingly secular, liberal and antipathetic to a Catholic worldview, the Catholic tendency in the Church of England could not survive. From the first discussions...

Featured Term (selected at random:REVOLUTION A radical and generally violent effort to overthrow a civil government or constitution. Essential to a revolution is that the change of regime is not brought about by peaceful evolution or mutual agreement between the power that withdraws and the power that takes over the new government. Revolutions are caused either by the masses or by an act of high officials in the government. In the latter case it is called a coup d'état. In the twelfth century John of Salisbury (1115-80), followed by others, held that the murder of a tyrant was permissible even...

Growing up in New Albany, Ind., during the 1950s, I never heard the term “domestic church,” but I knew what it meant. I knew it because my parents and my friends’ parents made their homes domestic churches, even before that phrase from our Catholic tradition was retrieved during the Second Vatican Council. I guess you could say that my childhood friends and neighbors were at home in church and in church at home. But what did it mean in practical terms that we experienced the family as a domestic church? For one thing, it meant that nearly every Catholic family...

I begin with a piece, spotted by Fr Tim Finigan and reported in his indispensable blog The Hermeneutic of Continuity, which had been published in Sandro Magister’s blog—not his English one, Chiesa, but his Italian language blog for L’Espresso, Settimo Cielo.A few days ago, Magister told the story of a parish priest in the Italian diocese of Novara, Fr Tarcisio Vicario, who recently discussed the question of Holy Communion for the divorced and remarried. This is how he explained the Church’s teaching on the matter: “For the Church, which acts in the name of the Son of God, marriage...

July 17, 2014Thursday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time    Reading 1 Is 26:7-9, 12, 16-19 The way of the just is smooth;the path of the just you make level.Yes, for your way and your judgments, O LORD,we look to you;Your name and your titleare the desire of our souls.My soul yearns for you in the night,yes, my spirit within me keeps vigil for you;When your judgment dawns upon the earth,the world’s inhabitants learn justice.O LORD, you mete out peace to us,for it is you who have accomplished all we have done. O LORD, oppressed by your punishment,we...

Shhhh! Do not speak of this! “Talk about extreme, militant Islamists and the atrocities that they have perpetrated globally might undercut the positive achievements that we Catholics have attained in our inter-religious dialogue with devout Muslims.” — Robert McManus, Roman Catholic Bishop of Worcester, Massachusetts, February 8, 2013. Those “positive achievements” don’t include doing a thing to stop this sort of thing, even in modern, moderate Turkey.“Hostilities at Catholic Church in Istanbul, Turkey Leave Parishioners Fearing Worse,” Morning Star News, July 15, 2014: ISTANBUL, Turkey (Morning Star News) – Members of a Catholic church in Istanbul fear an attack after...

In his message to the “Mexico/Holy See Colloquium on Migration and Development,” Pope Francis characterized the tens of thousands of illegal immigrants that have crossed the U.S. southern border as a product of globalization, suggesting that the phenomenon is happening worldwide. Francis proclaimed, “Despite the large influx of migrants present in all continents and in almost all countries, migration is still seen as an emergency, or as a circumstantial and sporadic fact, while instead it has now become a hallmark of our society and a challenge.” Emmer McCarthy for Vatican Radio said Francis expressed his concern for “the tens of...

A canon lawyer alleging a widespread cover-up of clergy sex misconduct in the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis has made her most detailed claims yet, accusing archbishops and their top staff of lying to the public and of ignoring the U.S. bishops' pledge to have no tolerance of priests who abuse.

Featured Term (selected at random:JUS JURANDUM A sworn oath. Any one of the oaths that the Church at times requires of the faithful, and especially of her priests. Such was the Oath Against Modernism, required of those teaching in seminaries, prescribed by Pope St. Pius X. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

Fr. Dwight Longenecker, posting on his“Standing on my Head” blog (appropriately named given the frequency with which pontifications seem to flow so freely from his other end), recently suggested that traditionalists (aka Catholics) are “getting old.” Obviously, he’s never been to a “traditionalist” gathering to witness the overwhelming presence of young, often quite large, families. “Not only are they dying out,” he wrote, “but their ideas are dying out.” It isn’t immediately clear what “ideas” he has in mind, but presumably he is speaking of such notions as the Social Kingship of Christ as taught with such stunning clarity by...

July 16, 2014Wednesday of the Fifteenth Week in Ordinary Time    Reading 1 Is 10:5-7, 13b-16 Thus says the LORD:Woe to Assyria! My rod in anger,my staff in wrath.Against an impious nation I send him,and against a people under my wrath I order himTo seize plunder, carry off loot,and tread them down like the mud of the streets.But this is not what he intends,nor does he have this in mind;Rather, it is in his heart to destroy,to make an end of nations not a few. For he says:“By my own power I have done it,and by my wisdom, for...

In a Monday letter to a Mexico City Vatican conference, Pope Francis wrote that the tens of thousands of Central American children illegally crossing into the United States should be “welcomed and protected.” Just days after President Obama visited Texas and pledged a solution to the US border crisis, the Pope said migrant children’s human rights are being violated. “Many people forced to emigrate suffer, and often, die tragically,” he said. “Many of their rights are violated. They are obliged to separate from their families and, unfortunately, continue to be the subject of racist and xenophobic attitudes.” The Pope also...

Featured Term (selected at random:DECRETALS A letter carrying authoritative decisions on matters of discipline, or the Pope's reply when he has been appealed to on a matter of discipline. The term is also applied to a collection of certain decretals such as Liber Sextus Decretalium, compiled by Pope Boniface VIII (1235-1303). (Etym. Latin decretale, a decree.) All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.