Free Republic

We began the month of May with a necessary interview with the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Joe Biden, about a sexual-assault allegation. The questioning, of course, came after an introduction that included the unholy litany of accusations against the current president of the United States. The Biden interview came a few days after a midnight tweet from the president ridiculing a number of media personalities in cruel ways, including the journalist interviewing Biden. And before that tweet was another from the president, announcing that he would be virtually attending Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral the next morning. During the Mass,...

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Nearly every afternoon just before 12:30, the sisters of the Servants of the Lord and the Virgin of Matará leave their Capitol Hill convent to greet Monsignor Charles Pope at Washington’s Holy Comforter – St. Cyprian church. Together, they circle the popular Lincoln Park praying the rosary, an ancient and beautiful Catholic devotion. It’s a contemplative prayer, rooted in scripture; a meditation on the sacred mysteries of Christ’s life, death, and resurrection that’s been prayed through many centuries and plagues before our own. “The church remains open during the day for private prayer; people come and go...

The Public Health measures mandated during the Coronavirus have made it to where healthy individuals who are used to taking communion cannot do so. This begs the question of should loved ones be giving communion to each other at home? While the deaths and sickness of the Coronavirus are tragic, as is any death, there are larger questions than even death such as “Where is God?”, “What is God trying to teach us during this time?” and “Who is Jesus Christ and what does it mean that He came to save us?” One of the greatest things that has happened...

Vancouver, Canada, Mar 6, 2020 / 08:19 pm (CNA).- A Vancouver-based bicycling charity broke a long-standing partnership with a local Knights of Columbus group this week and rejected their donations of bikes over the Knight’s “anti-LGBTQ+” beliefs, The B.C. Catholic reported. “I’m sad that religious intolerance seems to be getting in the way of getting bikes to poor people,” Graham Darling, the spokesman for the local Knights council, told The B.C. Catholic. The PEDAL Society is a non-profit that recycles and refurbishes used bicycles, and also provides education in bike mechanics to the community. Darling said the society called to...

The Rev. Ernesto Cardenal, one of Latin America’s most admired poets and priests, who defied the Roman Catholic Church in the 1980s by serving in the revolutionary Sandinista government of Nicaragua, died on Sunday in Managua, Nicaragua. He was 95. His personal assistant, Luz Marina Acosta, confirmed his death to The Associated Press. Born to a wealthy Nicaraguan family, Father Cardenal became a prominent intellectual voice of the Nicaraguan revolution and an ardent proponent of liberation theology, a Christian movement rooted in Marxist principles and committed to social justice and uplifting the poor. He was appointed Nicaragua’s first minister of...

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- There were women weeping in a chapel here. One named Veronica was something like inconsolable. She was talking about the crucifixion of Christ as if it was happening right then and there. She was feeling it. She was overwhelmed by the love of a God who would save humanity from the misery of sin and finality of death by coming into the world as a baby and dying such a brutal death. Through their tears, women were giving thanks to God for a successful three-day mission here at America's largest Catholic parish, St. Matthew's, led by a...

February 11, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — For years the Catholic Church in Germany has been heading down a very dangerous path. It seems that with each day we are getting closer to a point where it officially breaks off into schism. Just last week the Vice President of the German Bishops Conference, Bishop Franz-Josef Bode, said that, “Christ became a human being, not a man.” What blasphemy! On top of that, Cardinal Reinhard Marx, the president of the German Bishops Conference, has time and time again expressed support for heretical policies — ordaining women deacons, allowing Protestants to receive Holy Communion,...

The president and CEO of Hallmark, Inc., announced on Sunday that the company will be reversing a controversial decision it made earlier this month to pull advertisements that featured a lesbian couple getting married and kissing. The executive, Mike Perry, said on Sunday that the team at the parent company behind The Hallmark Channel, Crown Media Family Networks, has “been agonizing over this decision as we’ve seen the hurt it has unintentionally caused.” “Said simply, they believe this was the wrong decision. Our mission is rooted in helping all people connect, celebrate traditions, and be inspired to capture meaningful moments...

If House speaker Nancy Pelosi is a "practicing Catholic," then Sen. Elizabeth Warren is an American Indian. If she is a practicing Catholic, then one hopes that one day, she gets it right. You cannot be in fundamental disagreement with a fundamental doctrine of the Catholic Church and then wrap yourself in its vestments to proclaim you don't hate anybody. Funny: Cafeteria Catholic Pelosi doesn't invoke her Christian conscience when she supports her caucus's abortion-until-birth infanticide policy, the ultimate separation of mother from child.

CHICAGO -- For some reason, the very first thing I noticed on my early morning visit to the beautiful St. John Cantius Church was a statue tucked away in a corner, between two confessionals. It depicts Jesus comforting the prodigal son, from the Gospel parable. It seemed to speak so much about so much. Obviously, it's about forgiveness and mercy. Clearly, it's about the nature of God in the New Testament. As the Windy (boy, was it!) City was already decked out in holiday lights, I couldn't help but see a message for more than "the holidays" about welcome and...

READING, Pa. — Pennsylvania overhauled its child sexual abuse laws Tuesday more than a year after a grand jury report showed the cover-up of hundreds of cases of abuse in most of Pennsylvania’s Roman Catholic dioceses over the last seven decades. The central bill signed by Gov. Tom Wolf gives future victims of child sex abuse more time to file lawsuits and to end time limits for police to file criminal charges. The grand jury report spurred several states to change their laws and other states to begin similar investigations.

"Discouragement is a form of pride; sadness is often caused by our egotism." That sort of leaped off the page as I was recently doing a little reading of the work of the late Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, to mark the news that before the year is through, he will have made a big step toward being an official saint of the Catholic Church. The sentence was the linguistic equivalent of a five-alarm fire, to be perfectly honest, not just for our current culture but for my life. As you might be aware, there was a protracted court battle involving...

Full Title:"New fence at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC going up on NYPD’s advice and over gripes from homeless advocates" St. Patrick’s Cathedral plans to install a decorative/protective iron fence atop the stone wall at the Madison Ave. end of the cathedral as an anti-terrorism security upgrade recommended by the NYPD outside the residence of Timothy Cardinal Dolan. But the grassy strip between the current 4-foot, 8-inch high wall and the Neo-Gothic cathedral is sometimes used by the local homeless to bed down for the night, and advocates wondered if there was some way to protect both his eminence and...

ENGLAND, November 4, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – The Catholic diocese of Salford in north-west England has become the latest of multiple Catholic dioceses around the United Kingdom to begin hosting “LGBT+ Masses.” In Salford, as in the other dioceses, the LGBT+ Masses enjoy the support of their respective local bishops. Advertisements for the Masses have become widely available in churches and on various official parish and diocesan websites. Many of these advertisements are emblazoned with the rainbow flag or popular Catholic images such as crosses or the Sacred Heart filled with the rainbow colours. Several of the groups involved in organizing...

It was something like 12:30 in the morning on the first of November when I noticed the man across from me on a delayed flight from Florida to New York making the sign of the cross. He was a tough-looking fella, and while I was delighted to know I wasn't the only one praying in the turbulence, it also struck me as confirmation that this being tossed right and left and dipping and dropping in the air was not a good thing. We (obviously) survived, and the pilots made an amazingly smooth landing, considering the strong winds, but was it...

It is no secret that America is polarized. This is a fact that is manifested in so many different ways. Traveling down the highway to Chicago, for example, I came upon two successive billboards that I thought were striking examples of our divided culture. The first billboard caught me by surprise: it consisted of an electrocardiogram of a heart that suddenly stops beating. The caption read: When you die, you will meet God. As we were passing through the snowy night, I was unable to catch more details of this billboard. I do not know who put it out or...

If you want a window into the crisis the Catholic Church faces, look to the Amazon Synod now underway in Rome. The synod made headlines this week when two anonymous operatives entered the Santa Maria in Traspontina Church near St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome early Monday morning, removed at least three pagan fertility statues from the side altars, and threw them into the Tiber River. They videotaped the whole thing and issued a statement saying faithful Catholics “are being attacked by members of our own Church.”Why were pagan fertility statues—idols, really—on display in a Catholic Church in the first...

A pro-life display memorializing the unborn victims of abortion was destroyed by vandals Saturday outside a Catholic church in Pennsylvania. The report is the latest in a growing string of harassment, assaults, vandalism and other incidents targeting pro-lifers. Earlier this month, volunteers at Our Lady of Guadalupe Church in Buckingham, Pennsylvania, set up the pro-life display for Respect Life month, according to a news release. The 61 crosses in the display symbolize the 61 million babies who have been aborted since Roe v. Wade legalized abortion on demand in 1973. The pastor Rev. Monsignor Joseph P. Gentili said 40 of...

Catholicism preaches forgiveness, but this might be a tough ask. The face of a Virgin Mary statue outside a Downtown Jersey City church was found covered with dog feces and the depraved vandal added a cigarette to the desecration. The vandalism was reported by a parishioner who was entering St. Michael Church on Ninth Street just before the daily midday Mass, said the Rev. Thomas Quinn, the pastor. “I was shocked, saddened and angry,” Quinn said. “Without a doubt it was the work of someone who is emotionally disturbed. Still, there was some degree of deliberation there.”

Pope Francis releases a video message accompanying his prayer intention for September, which is that the world's seas and oceans may be protected.In his prayer intention for the month of September 2019, Pope Francis invites us to pray that "politicians, scientists and economists work together to protect the world’s seas and oceans." It has become the custom of Pope Francis to release a video message detailing his prayer intention for each month. The full text of his intention is below: Oceans contain the bulk of our planet’s water supply, and also most of the immense variety of living creatures, many...