Free Republic

ObamaCare: In bad news for a White House intent on shredding the First Amendment, a Supreme Court justice has exempted a group of nuns from the mandate to provide contraceptive coverage in health plans. Just hours before ObamaCare's birth-control mandate was to take effect, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor on Tuesday issued a last-minute stay in response to a case brought by the Denver-based Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged against the Department of Health and Human Services. The U.S. government is "temporarily enjoined from enforcing against applicants the contraceptive coverage requirements imposed by the Patient Protection...

BY SR. MARYANN WALSH, USCCBThe Amish are exempt from the entire health care reform law. So are members of Medi-Share, a program of Christian Care Ministry. Yet, when the Catholic Church asks for a religious exemption from just one regulation issued under the law – the mandate that all employers, including religious institutions, must pay for sterilization and contraceptives, including abortion-inducing drugs – the Administration balks.The government respects the First Amendment that guarantees the right to freely exercise one’s religious beliefs, but only to a point. In the health care law it picks and chooses which beliefs it respects. The...

Dec15 Is the Bottom Really Falling Out of Catholic Mass Attendance? A Recent CARA Survey Ponders the QuestionBy: Msgr. Charles Pope Is the number of Catholics really dropping? Is the bottom really falling out of Catholic Mass attendance? If you are a regular reader of this blog you know that I have written several articles and cited several studies that detail an increasingly grave situation for the Church (e.g. HERE). Most of us are familiar with a significant number of Church closings, school closings and the like thought Catholic America. These surely strengthen the view that we are in an increasingly...

In the early hours of the resurrection appearances on the first Easter Sunday news began to be circulated that Jesus was alive and had been seen. These reports were, at first disbelieved or at least doubted by the apostles. Various reports from both women and men were dismissed by the apostles. But suddenly in the evening of that first Easter Sunday there is a change, and a declaration by the apostles that the Lord “has truly risen!” What effected this change? We will see in a moment. But first note the early reports of the resurrection and how they were...

May20 The Church is A MiracleBy: Msgr. Charles Pope If the Church were depending on human beings to exist and stay unified how long do think she would have lasted? Probably about twenty minutes, max! There are no governments or nations that have lasted 2000 years. Very little else in this world can claim such antiquity and even if it does can it claim to have remained essentially unchanged in its dogma or teaching? The Catholic Church is one, even after 2000 years. An unbroken line of Popes back to Peter and an unbroken line of succession for all...

In discussing the Health and Human Services (HHS) Mandate that will attempt to force the Catholic Church to pay for contraceptives, abortifacients, and sterilization, I have discovered that many Catholics, while generally understanding why we object to paying for sterilization and abortifacients, are less than enthusiastic about our refusal to pay for contraceptives. This “lack of enthusiasm” for the Church’s position on Contraception, along with political irritation, makes many Catholics ambivalent or even hostile to the Bishop’s call that we oppose the HHS mandate.Why we won’t pay for contraceptives – While the fundamental issue is this matter is Religious Freedom...

A settlement was reached in the 2010 case of a Hispanic woman against the Evansville Catholic Diocese and others. A confidential settlement agreement was reached in the case where Silvia Gameros alleged the diocese, employees and the Catholic Community of Washington asked her to cover up the rape of her developmentally disabled daughter in 2007. The agreement, filed earlier this month in Daviess Circuit Court, was signed between Gameros and the diocese was confidential and claims against the diocese, the Catholic Community of Washington and employees Sister Karen Durliat, Kande Batz and Jorge Gomez were dismissed. A default judgment was...

According to the Pew Hispanic Center, there are about 11.2 million unauthorized persons residing in the United States. Each year, approximately 300,000 more unauthorized immigrants enter the country. In large part, these immigrants feel compelled to enter by either the explicit or implicit promise of employment in the American agriculture, construction, service and other industries. Most of this unauthorized flow comes from Mexico, a nation struggling with severe poverty. Survival has thus become the primary impetus for unauthorized immigration flow into the United States. Today’s unauthorized immigrants are largely low-skilled workers who come to the United States for work to...

Warning that a Middle East empty of Christians would be “just like the Taliban,” Iraq’s most senior Catholic leader pointedly called on the West to show greater concern for suffering Christians in the region. “We feel forgotten and isolated,” said Patriarch Louis Raphael I Sako, head of Iraq’s Chaldean Catholic Church. “We sometimes wonder, if they kill us all, what would be the reaction of Christians in the West? Would they do something then?” Sako made clear he’s not asking for a mobilization “to protect Christians,” but rather Western efforts to support “harmonious societies for all human beings”, based on...

The head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales labelled the Government’s immigration policies which prevent families from living together in Britain “inhumane”. Vincent Nicholas, the archbishop of Westminster, said rules which prevent foreign spouses of UK citizens moving here would blight the lives of thousands of British children. He called on the Government to rethink the legislation which came into force in 2012 which prevents people from outside the European Union settling in the UK with their British husband or wife unless they can show an annual income of at least £18,600. Writing in the Guardian, Nichols said:...

Washington D.C., Dec 13, 2013 / 04:00 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The Church’s welcoming stance on immigration is rooted in the person-centered recognition of human dignity, said one of the leading Hispanic bishops in the U.S. Church. “For us, as Catholics – following the example of Jesus in the Gospels – there is no way that we cannot be in favor of the immigrant,” said Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller of San Antonio. The Catholic position on immigration is a “humane position,” he told CNA in a November interview, “humane, and therefore very divine” The archbishop spoke at the annual fall meeting of...

(In recent months, the U.S. bishops have been emphasizing the need to increase lawful means for immigrants to enter the country, in order to focus enforcement on those who pose a threat to public safety, including smugglers, human traffickers and terrorists.) The Catholic Church also has a moral responsibility speak up address nations such as Mexico others to the south. The Catholic Church answer is relocate people, without doing anything to press leaders of Latin American countries about making improvement to yheir countries so nobody will have to leave.All the church is doing without saying anything negative about other countries...

The iconic red border of Time magazine will frame Pope Francis as its 2013 Person of the Year, the magazine announced Wednesday morning. By the judgement of Time’s editorial staff, the pope–elected earlier this year after a surprise resignation by predecessor Pope Benedict–was the most influential global newsmaker of the past 12 months. Earlier this week, Time narrowed the finalists down to ten, then five. Pope Francis ultimately won out over Edward Snowden, Syrian president Bashar Assad, Texas senator Ted Cruz and gay rights activist Edith Windsor.

Katie Scrivener worried that her infant son, Fulton, would cry when he encountered a very important man in Rome. She was the one who wound up weeping, albeit tears of joy. One of the enduring images that came out of the weekly general audience Pope Francis gave in St. Peter’s Square Nov. 20 has the pontiff trading gazes with Fulton Scrivener, who will celebrate his first birthday Dec. 19. In a photo that ran the next day on Page 1 of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, the Holy Father shows unabashed joy as he places his right hand on the...

Los Angeles, Calif., Nov 30, 2013 / 06:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Los Angeles Archbishop José H. Gomez and local political leaders have held a 24-hour fast to pray for immigration reform and to remember families who are separated from each other at Thanksgiving. “Today we are standing up for those who won't be sharing Thanksgiving dinner with their families and loved ones – those who are suffering because of our broken immigration system,” Archbishop Gomez said Nov. 25 at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. He called for a “conversion of hearts” to fix U.S. immigration law. The...

A spokesman for the liberal organization Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good (CACG) has posted on the group’s website a denunciation of what he states were “incendiary remarks about Pope Francis” by conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh on Wednesday. Limbaugh said that Pope Francis was wrong in his apostolic exhortation released this week in which he appears to blame capitalism for the reason why people are poor in the world. CACG’s Christopher Jolly Hale wrote on Wednesday: Catholics of all political stripes are disturbed by Rush Limbaugh's incendiary comments this afternoon about Pope Francis. To call the Holy Father...

Pope Francis lays flowers at the foot of the statue of Our Lady of Lujan on May 8, 2013. Credit: Stephen Driscoll/CNA. Vatican City, Nov 26, 2013 / 06:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Francis reaffirmed Catholic teaching on male priesthood in his first apostolic exhortation, while calling for a broader application of the “feminine genius” in Church life. “The reservation of the priesthood to males, as a sign of Christ the Spouse who gives himself in the Eucharist, is not a question open to discussion,” he said, “but it can prove especially divisive if sacramental power is too closely identified...

The bishops of several dioceses in the southwestern US and Mexico today released a strongly worded open letter which stresses the need for immigration reform, and a program which will reunite families divided by illegal immigration, 1200 WOAI news reports. "We border bishops believe that what it happening to the immigrant family in the United States is an offense against God and human conscience," San Antonio Archbishop Gustavo Garcia-Siller said in releasing the pastoral letter, called 'Family Beyond Borders.' The letter says that not only is immigration reform the moral course of action, it says it is a 'misperception' that...

Mexico City -- Children giggle with hysterical joy as drops of holy water hit them. A handicapped man in pain groans, reaching for the hope that is so palpable here. A pregnant woman takes in a little of the peace of this place, even in the midst of all the noise. All along, I can't help but remember: "Like it or not, we must be good to the poor, because if we're not, we're going to hell." The quote comes from Archbishop Charles J. Chaput of Philadelphia. It's something to think about this Thanksgiving. I'm at the Mexican capital's...

EVEN AT AGE 13 in 1964, the Vatican II liturgical changes that were just being introduced left me a bit uneasy, in particular, the near-immediate decline of good Catholic church music. I resolved to do something about it, so at age 14, with no keyboard training at all, I began to study organ and aspired to compose good liturgical music. To make a long story short, in a mere year or two my enthusiasm (it sure wasn’t my keyboard technique!) landed me a little scholarship at the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music. The head of the Conservatory was Michael P. Hammond...