Free Republic

On this week's show, Chris Pryor discusses a recent encounter with a parishioner of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) and shows some critical examples of intellectual Antisemitism within the group.

Former Trump White House adviser Steve Bannon is helping to craft the curriculum for a leadership course at a right-wing Roman Catholic institute in Italy, stepping up his efforts to influence conservative thinking in the church. Benjamin Harnwell, director of the Dignitatis Humanae Institute based in a mountaintop monastery not far from Rome, told Reuters Bannon had been helping to build up the institute for about half of its eight-year life. Cardinal Raymond Burke, a leading Vatican conservative who is president of the Institute’s board of advisers, said Bannon would be playing a leading role there. Burke told Reuters he...

Stalin’s Priests” tells the story of Rolf Wozzack, a KGB agent, who is hand chosen by Joseph Stalin himself as part of the Russian leader’s plan to infiltrate the Catholic church to subvert it for his own use and eventually destroy it from within. Meanwhile, a 10-year-old girl named Lucia is visited by angels and the Virgin Mary with her two cousins and is told through prophecies 20 years before Stalin comes to power that Russia will spread evil throughout the world and persecute the church. “Through our research, we discovered that the head of the NY State Teachers Union...

Gay group Dignity USA president Chris Pett: “He’s hijacking the parish and trampling on core Catholic values . . . The archdiocese needs to denounce this in the strongest possible terms.” Father (Paul) Kalchik, 56, claims he was preceded by three “bad priests” who were “big in promoting the gay lifestyle” before he was ordained as pastor of Resurrection by Cardinal Francis George in 2007. The flag was first displayed prominently at the church’s altar in 1991 to welcome LGBTQ worshippers to the faith, according to Kalchik, but it was later taken down and put into storage — along with...

Two dozen LGBTQ activists rallied Wednesday night outside the Avondale church where a priest burned a rainbow flag last week against the orders of Cardinal Blase Cupich. Calling the Rev. Paul Kalchik’s Sept. 14 flag-burning at Resurrection Catholic Church a “hate crime plain and simple,” Ald. Deb Mell (33rd) called on Pope Francis and Cupich “to send this hateful bigot packing.” “We’ve come so far as an LGBTQ community, and we have so many things to celebrate, and to think that this hatred is being spread in our neighborhood is not acceptable,” she said. “This isn’t who we are ....

A North Side priest who says he “can’t sit well” with Cardinal Blase Cupich burned a gay-friendly flag outside his Avondale church last week — against the wishes of the cardinal he claims is trying to minimize the clergy sex-abuse crisis. Rev. Paul Kalchik says the banner, featuring a cross superimposed over a rainbow, had been featured prominently in the sanctuary at Resurrection Catholic Church but had been taken down and was forgotten in storage at the parish at 3043 N. Francisco for more than a decade. Kalchik led seven parishioners in a prayer of exorcism Friday, and the flag...

I’ve been thinking a lot about priests lately. In truth, I often do, as some of my best friends happen to wear Roman collars. I see them on their low days, and I see them in moments of true total self-surrender. Of course, you know why I’d be thinking about them even more lately. For priests who seek holiness in loving service to God’s people — striving to see God in every person they encounter — these are grueling times. And a few conversations I’ve had lately have reminded me that the good and holy among them, while still human...

Two Catholic priests were arrested Monday after police said they were caught performing sex acts on each other in a parked car near a Miami Beach playground, reports said. Diego Berrio, 39, and Edwin Giraldo Cortez, 30, face charges of lewd and lascivious behavior after a passerby spotted the alleged rendezvous in a rented Volkswagen Beetle in broad daylight, the New York Post reported. Giraldo Cortes also faces an indecent exposure charge. The car did not have tinted windows, so officers said they were able to witness the sexual acts upon arrival, the newspaper reported. The two Chicago-area priests apparently...

Aren't Liberals the strangest creatures? President Trump had consensual sex with grown women years before running for President, and they want to throw him out of The White House. Francis covered up the homosexual molestation of children for years and years, and they want him to remain POPE.

Pope Francis refuses to say "a single word" about the accusation by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, former papal nuncio to the United States, that Francis knew in 2013 of former Cardinal Theodore McCarrick's sexual predations of young men in seminary and covered them up. I've had it with this man. He goes around redefining Church dogma to suit himself, saying there is no Hell. As the head of the Church, he doesn't have the right to do that. If he wants to gainsay Christ, he should resign his post and go on a lecture tour as a private citizen, saying...

Franciscan Media Image: Saint Rose of Lima with Child Jesus | anonymousSaint Rose of Lima Saint of the Day for August 23 (April 20, 1586 – August 24, 1617) Saint Rose of Lima’s Story The first canonized saint of the New World has one characteristic of all saints—the suffering of opposition—and another characteristic which is more for admiration than for imitation—excessive practice of mortification.She was born to parents of Spanish descent in Lima, Peru, at a time when South America was in its first century of evangelization. She seems to have taken Catherine of Siena as a model, in...

This week a grand jury reported on documents from six Catholic Church dioceses in Pennsylvania that revealed 300 “predator priests” have been accused of sexually abusing over 1,000 children. The grand jury report states: “We believe that the real number – of children whose records were lost, or who were afraid ever to come forward – is in the thousands. Most of the victims were boys; but there were girls too. Some were teens; many were prepubescent… But all of them were brushed aside, in every part of the state, by church leaders who preferred to protect the abusers and...

Within the past quarter-century, sexual abuse by clergy has been a high profile scandal within the Catholic Church. Most recently, the detestable accusations against Cardinal Theodore “Uncle Ted” McCarrick have rocked the Church and re-opened the discussion on how to handle cases of clerical abuse. Cardinal McCarrick posing with one of the young men who has accused him of sexual abuse While it may be tempting to encapsulate clerical abuse as a modern phenomenon, fallen human nature and sin have existed since the Garden of Eden, along with it those who would use their position within the Church to...

The University of Notre Dame has decided not to rescind the honorary degree that it granted in 2008 to the disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick, Archbishop Emeritus of Washington, D.C. On Thursday, Notre Dame’s president, Father John Jenkins, wrote in a statement that the Indiana Catholic university would await the results of McCarrick’s canonical trial in Rome before coming to a final decision regarding his honorary doctorate. Pope Francis recently accepted McCarrick’s resignation from the College of Cardinals after a flood of allegations that he sexually abused both adults and children. The allegations against the former cardinal are many, spanning...

We are joined tonight by Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, OP. from Thomistic Evolution. Fr. Nicanor is a biologist and a Dominican priest committed to the idea that evolution is completely compatible with traditional Thomistic theology. His fantastic site can be found at: http://www.thomisticevolution.org/about-us/

July 27, 2018 (The Wanderer) – For years, the late Paul Likoudis, editor of the orthodox Catholic newspaper, The Wanderer, chronicled the role of homosexuality in the crimes committed by clerics. Long before the Boston Globe published its “exposé” in early 2002, Paul reported on one instance after another of abuse and cover-up in chanceries nationwide. For his yeoman efforts, he was ridiculed, hectored, threatened, bullied, and, above all, studiously ignored whenever possible by one guilty bishop after another.  When the Globe’s series appeared in January 2002, the bishops could no longer persist in their obstinate denial. But they immediately insisted...

July 17, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – A Catholic deacon who is openly homosexual has continued to write salacious reviews of obscene movies for a “gay” newspaper in San Francisco for at least a year since Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone was informed of his activities, LifeSite has learned. Over a year ago, in June 2017 the archdiocese told LifeSite that Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone, Archbishop of San Francisco, was concerned about Deacon Brian Bromberger’s writings, but later acknowledged that the archbishop had met with Deacon Brian Bromberger and had allowed him to continue writing for the publication while exercising “careful discretion” over subject matter,...

An increasing number Catholic women are taking life-long chastity vows in order to “dedicate themselves” to God, according to the Vatican. Consecrated virgins are unmarried women who pledge to remain celibate for their entire lives, eschewing romantic or sexual relationships to devote themselves exclusively to being mystical “brides of Christ”. Unlike nuns, they take on no role within the church. Instead of joining a religious order, they continue to live in their own homes and work in conventional jobs. While rare and little-known even within the church, the lifestyle is considered to be Christianity’s oldest form of total devotion to...

Christ came to me emblazoned on the upper arm of my beloved cousin Marc. The blue-black ink danced between the bullet scars and stretch marks that graced my cousin’s upper body. Atop this crown-of-thorns depiction was a tattooed banner with the phrase “Only God Can Judge Me.” Marc—like several men in my family—had been caught in the webbed threads of poverty, geography and lack of opportunity during the fever pitch of 1990s mass incarceration. Baggy-pant boys like him fit the descriptions of “super-predators” and “thugs” that dominated our national discourse at the time. Marc served his time, and has been...

Over the years, I’ve had several Catholic friends and converts ask why I ultimately didn’t convert to their denomination. During my first two years of college, I spent a significant amount of time with Catholics, including at the (then?) US Opus Dei headquarters in NYC. I attended these gatherings with a good friend, who eventually decided to convert from Evangelicalism. I came close to converting, but ultimately decided against it. This has surprised some Catholics. I suspect this is because the standard narrative is that Protestants, especially Evangelicals, are crossing the Tiber in great droves. Statistically, the narrative isn’t quite...