Free Republic

The Irish referendum—in which 66% of voters chose to allow parliament to legalize abortion—underscored the decadeslong decline of the Catholic church as a political force in that nation. It also accentuated a mirror image in Poland, the last major nation in Europe whose Catholic Church still dominates politics, society, and culture. Poland was once among the easiest places in Europe to get access to an abortion. Under Communism, ferries brought pregnant women from Sweden and Denmark for the procedure, which was free of charge. That changed at the end of the Cold War, when the Catholic church emerged as a...

CANBERRA, Australia, June 12, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A new law in Australia requires Catholic priests in Canberra to break the sacred seal of confession to report a child-sex abuser. The law, which has drawn fierce opposition from Archbishop Christopher Prowse of Canberra, could result in faithful priests being jailed who refuse to comply. A bill passed on June 7 by the Legislative Assembly of the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) extends mandatory reporting of child abuse to cover churches and church activities, including the Catholic confessional. All the political parties in the Assembly supported the measure. A Roman Catholic priest cannot...

Many celebrities flirted with the Met Gala theme this year — the influence of Catholicism on fashion — but no one took it on as fearlessly as Rihanna, who dressed like the female pope the Vatican’s never had. She wore a white beaded Margiela corset mini dress under a full skirt, with a beaded bishop’s hat to match. The outfit was accessorized with a pearl anklet and a bejeweled crucifix necklace. Rihanna’s hat was reminiscent of the papal tiaras worn by popes from the medieval era until the mid-1960s. The last papal tiara — a bejeweled, three-­tiered gold and silver...

If Italian Vaticanist Marco Tosatti had not told the story of the Fraternity of the Holy Apostles of Brussels, no one would have known that Pope Francis personally intervened to dissolve this recently-created order last November. It was a personal decision made, it seems, on the insistence of the recently-named Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, Cardinal Beniamino Stella. It thus short-circuited the judgment of the Apostolic Signatura, where appeals against the dissolution of this young Fraternity had reached their final stage. The former members of the Fraternity – six priests who are now plain diocesan priests in Belgium...

Pope Francis is a Soros puppet. Soros has placed his boy from Harvard, Jeffrey Sachs, in the Vatican for the last several years as Pope Francis' handler. Notice that Francis pushes the exact same things that Soros' puppet US president Obama did: Global warming illegal aliens muslims ------------------------------------------------------- Jeffrey Sachs Encourages Catholic Organizations to Divest https://catholicclimatemovement.global/jeffrey-sachs-divestment/ Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and Special Advisor to UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, expressed his strong support of the four Catholic organizations that announced their plans today to divest from fossil fuels on the occasion of the first...

The comparison is obvious. A new Gallup poll finds a precipitous drop in Catholic Church attendance coinciding with the years of Pope Francis's papacy. Francis is known for shoving secular statist left-wing ideology into church teachings, through both his words and his deeds, just as Colin Kaepernick did with the National Football League. That's clear in what Pope Francis says and in whom he invites into the Vatican to provide advice. And surprise, surprise, the result is the same: the fans and the flock stay away. Breitbart reports: Catholic church attendance in the United States fell by six percent between...

ROME, April 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – Mainstream media was in a furor last week over the news of Pope Francis purportedly saying that “hell does not exist” and that unrepentant souls in mortal sin simply “disappear.” On the eve of the Holy Thursday, an Italian journalist published an article claiming that the pope had told him that hell does not exist. Eugenio Scalfari, 93, atheist journalist and founder of the left-wing newspaper La Repubblica, claimed on March 28 that Pope Francis had told him two days before that the souls of those who do not go to heaven are annihilated....

Holy Saturday Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception, a government-approved church in Beijing. BEIJING — China will not allow any foreign interference in religious affairs in the country, a senior official said on Tuesday, dousing expectations of an imminent deal with the Vatican over control of the Roman Catholic Church here. “I think there is no religion in human society that is above the state,” the official, Chen Zongrong, said during a briefing on religious affairs in China, underscoring the government’s intention to maintain strict control over all religious organizations and their believers. Mr. Chen’s remarks came...

To Change the Church: Pope Francis and the Future of Catholicismby ross douthatsimon and schuster, 256 pages, $26It is beyond question that the Roman Catholic Church is currently in the throes of one of the greatest crises in its two-millennium history. In human terms, its future might be said to be in doubt for the first time since the Reformation. The broad contours of the present crisis are the onward march of secularization in Europe and North America, the purging of Christians from the ancient heartlands of the Middle East, and the erosion of South American Catholicism by the missions...

The Vatican sealed off part of St Peter's Basilica after chunks of plaster rained down on worshippers at the height of the Easter holiday season. No one was injured by the falling plaster, which fell near Michelangelo's famed Pieta statue, near the main entrance.

In another interview with his longtime atheist friend, Eugenio Scalfari, Pope Francis claims that Hell does not exist and that condemned souls just "disappear." This is a denial of the 2,000-year-old teaching of the Catholic Church about the reality of Hell and the eternal existence of the soul. The interview between Scalfari and the Pope was published March 28, 2018 in La Repubblica. The relevant section on Hell was translated by the highly respected web log, Rorate Caeli. The interview is headlined, "The Pope: It is an honor to be called revolutionary." (Il Papa: “È un onore essere chiamato rivoluzionario.")...

Totalitarian systems are militantly Christophobic.  The comments to some of my articles on the dangers of materialism or the ignorance of atheism try to prove that religion is as dangerous to goodness as atheism repeat the false "fact" that "Hitler was a Catholic."  This is utterly untrue.  Moreover, all Nazism was viciously Christophobic as well as Judeophobic. My American Thinker article of November 2007 covers some of the evidence found in old books about the hate all Nazis felt toward Christianity.  My book, Swastika against the Cross: The Nazi War on Christianity, covers many more documentary sources that reveal Nazi persecution of Christianity...

Bishop Thomas John Paprocki of the Springfield Roman Catholic diocese has reaffirmed that U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, should not be allowed to receive Holy Communion because of a recent vote on an abortion issue. According to a statement issued by Paprocki on Feb. 13, Durbin was among 14 Catholic members of the U.S. Senate who voted against a bill that would have prohibited abortions starting at 20 weeks after fertilization. The bill, dubbed the Pain-Capable Unborn Child Protection Act, on Jan. 29 got only 51 of a needed 60 votes to move forward in the Senate. “Because his voting...

A 2015 Pew survey reported that the total number of Catholics in the United States dropped by 3 million since 2007, now comprising about 20 percent - or one-fifth - of the total population. Catholicism is losing more members than it gains at a higher rate than any other denomination – a recent development which the radical progressives at Salon celebrate. Why is this an issue that should worry Americans and the Western world at large? One key reason is that the fastest-growing religion in the country and around the world is Islam – something Salon radicals also no...

We are in a time of the first ever mass conversions of Muslims,” Father Mitch Pacwa SJ told me in a phone interview. “God is doing a mighty work among them.” Pacwa said that mass conversions are happening even in very fundamentalist countries. There is rapidly growing number of conversions especially on the edges of the Muslim world in the western and southern parts of Africa, he said. “Africa is now growing predominantly Christian despite crackdowns,” Pacwa said. Some of the noteworthy countries he mentioned include Iran, reported to have 3 million Christians, and Indonesia with reports of 2 million...

Newsflash: The War on Christmas is over. Those who rightfully believe that Christ needs to be a part of Christmas and those rebelling against the politically correct tyranny looking to strip all spirituality from the holiday have lost. You have lost. We…have lost. According to the latest results from the Pew Research Center – and already being gleefully shouted from the rooftops of certain left-leaning media sites orchestrating the campaign against faith-based Christmas – while 90 percent of Americans still celebrate Christmas in one way or another, a majority find that the religious elements of Christmas are emphasized less and...

Taking up the themes I addressed in that document, I would now like to speak directly to every woman, to reflect with her on the problems and the prospects of what it means to be a woman in our time. In particular I wish to consider the essential issue of the dignity and rights of women, as seen in the light of the word of God. This "dialogue" really needs to begin with a word of thanks. As I wrote in my Apostolic Letter Mulieris Dignitatem, the Church "desires to give thanks to the Most Holy Trinity for the 'mystery...

When I was growing up, my parents almost daily rounded up my four siblings and I for family prayer, the seven of us—albeit with differing degrees of attention—reciting out loud the Catholic prayers of the rosary, while meditating on different events in Jesus Christ’s life. At the end of the rosary, after my dad had rattled off the oh, roughly 785 intentions he wanted the Lord to take some action on, it was the kids’ turn to announce to God what we’d like to see happen. And so when one of my brothers was 2, he began to pray for...

Pope Francis praises John Wesley for leading people to ‘knowledge of Jesus Christ’ by Staff Reporter posted Thursday, 19 Oct 2017 Pope Francis blesses a picture on a mobile phone (Getty Images) He was celebrating 50 years of dialogue with the World Methodist CouncilMethodism founder John Wesley brought many people to Christ through prayer and Bible reading, Pope Francis has said.Speaking with leaders of the World Methodist Council, Pope Francis praised 50 years of dialogue between the Catholic and Methodist churches, Vatican Radio reports.“We are no longer strangers,” he said, but rather, through our shared Baptism, “members of the household...

Bishop Nicholas DiMarzio of Brooklyn is forming a new commission to study the effects of racism in the Catholic Church and in the Brooklyn Diocese. He made the announcement Aug. 24 at a specially called Mass for Solidarity and Peace to counter the recent display of racism in demonstrations in Charlottesville, Virginia. He said, “I am establishing a diocesan commission for social justice. … In the coming months, we will design our commission to deal with the social and religious problems that racism - in all of its forms - presents to us.” “Racism remains the pre-eminent sin of not...