Free Republic

The beliefs of the Catholic Church are defined by two thousand years of careful writings and a slow process of understanding the revealed truths. This has brought us our Catechism, our Creed, encyclicals such as Humanae Vitae, and other solid references which provide a foundation for living well, especially in stressful times. One role of the clergy is to guide us Catholics in these teachings. The Church is not defined by whatever a priest in Paducah happens to say on Tuesday, and its faithful are under no obligation to take direction from misguided clergy. But how do we determine when...

The thought of Karl Marx, a German political agitator whose theory of “scientific socialism” wreaked havoc on the world for most of the 20th century, would seem to have been consigned to the ash heap of history following the fall of the Eastern Bloc communist regimes from 1989 to 1991. After decades of mass murder claiming tens of millions of victims, as well as the totalitarian oppression of hundreds of millions more, the reputation of Marxism had been destroyed almost completely, seemingly assuring its final demise.However, a resurgence of interest in Marx’s thought has been ongoing since 2008, when the...

Commenting on an Australian commission report that recommends ending mandatory celibacy of priests in the Catholic Church to apparently curtail sexual abuse, Catholic League President Bill Donohue said this possibly is Australia's way of saying there are too many homosexuals in the Catholic clergy, and he added that in the United States "homosexuals committed most of the abuse" in the church over the last 50 years. "Though it is not considered polite to say so, most people know that homosexuals are responsible for the lion's share of the problem in the Catholic Church," said Donohue. "This includes those who insist...

In light of the media's fascination with sex scandals in the Catholic clergy, it's worth noting that many of them virtually ignore other cases of pedophilia. Hardly anyone made a fuss about the disgraced Bill Clinton's pardon of disgraced former Rep. Mel "Thank Heaven for Little Girls" Reynolds, D-Ill., a crony of Jesse Jackson. And there have been countless cases of teachers in government schools sexually exploiting the children they are supposed to teach, but the media don't show much interest here either. To understand the double standard, just look at the media establishment's agenda: government schools good (no matter...