Free Republic

Pope Francis is undergoing a popularity surge comparable to the way Barack Obama was greeted by the world in 2008. And just as President Obama has been a disappointment for America, Pope Francis will prove a disaster for the Catholic Church. My fellow Catholics should be suspicious when bastions of anti-Catholicism in the left-wing media are in love with him. Much is being made of his ‘compassion’ and ‘humility,’ but kissing babies and hugging the sick is nothing new. Every pope in recent memory has done the same, yet only now are the media paying attention. Benedict XVI and John...

3D modeling depicted in the 2010 documentary The Real Face of Jesus? as seen on The History Channel.For those who believe the Shroud of Turin is the authentic burial cloth of Jesus, here is some breaking news: The Custodian of the Shroud at the Vatican has announced today that the Shroud will go on public display in 2015 in Turin, Italy for 45 days between the Easter season starting in mid-April 2015 until August 16, 2015. The last time the Shroud went on public display was in 2010 and two million pilgrims got to see the most sacred relic in...

Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press with David Gregory, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York said that the Catholic Church ideally would have backed Obamacare but for President Obama’s attempt to cram down violations of the First Amendment on Obamacare’s back. “We bishops have been really kind of in a tough place because we’re for universal, comprehensive, life-affirming healthcare,” Dolan said, emphasizing that church support for universal government healthcare dated back to 1919 in the United States. “So we’re not Johnny-come-latelies. We’ve been asking for reform in healthcare for a long time.” Dolan added, however, that the Obamacare mandate which...

Buenos Aires, December 2nd, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Extremely disturbing video footage from Argentina shows a mob of feminists at a recent protest attacking and sexually molesting a group of Rosary-praying Catholic men who were peacefully protecting the cathedral in the city of San Juan from threats of vandalism. The women, many of them topless, spray-painted the men’s crotches and faces and swastikas on their chests and foreheads, using markers to paint their faces with Hitler-like moustaches. They also performed obscene sexual acts in front of them and pushed their breasts onto their faces, all the while shouting “get your rosaries...

...U.S. Ambassador James "Wally" Brewster brought one thing with him this week that's a first for a male U.S. ambassador in the Caribbean nation: a husband. High-profile Catholic Church leaders have decried the new diplomatic appointment as a sign of a lack of respect from Obama. "He has not considered the particularities of our people. The United States is trying to impose on us marriage between gays and lesbians as well as adoption by these couples," said Father Luis Rosario, director of youth ministries for the church. A major fundraiser for Obama's 2012 campaign who most recently worked as a...

Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin are starting to sour on the new pope. In response to Pope Francis’ first Apostolic Exhortation, in which the pontiff denounced “trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world,” these two paragons of the far right – both of whom regularly invoke the teachings of Jesus to bolster their own political views – have suddenly turned their backs on the man whose actual job description is to speak for Jesus. Sarah Palin complained that Pope Francis sounded “kind...

The shockingly disfigured man, whose full-body tumours were lovingly kissed by the Pope, has been revealed as a 53-year-old Italian suffering from a rare genetic disease. Vinicio Riva’s entire body has been ravaged by the growths, a symptom of neorofibramatosis, which is not contagious. Earlier this month his picture shot round the world, when he was emotionally embraced by Pope Francis, at one of the pontiff’s weekly audiences in Rome. The severely disabled man, who is shunned in the street, and has induced horror even in his doctors, has for the first time described the encounter, saying that being caressed...

First Amendment: A federal court has ruled that the ObamaCare contraception mandate violates the guarantee of free exercise of religion and forces some to choose between their religious conscience and bankruptcy. The Supreme Court's decision in June 2012 that ObamaCare was constitutional because its fines for not complying with its mandates made the law a tax within Congress' authority to impose did not end the constitutional or court challenges to this attempt at redistribution of health and wealth. On Friday, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Gilardi v. HHS that ObamaCare's contraception mandate violates the constitutional rights of...

Ignore, for a moment, the pea soup. Forget the head swivel, the crucifix, those 75 stone steps that tumble from Prospect to M Street. Forget that demonic voice and what your mother may or may not be doing in Hell. The creator of the scariest movie of all time would like very much if you’d remember that he wrote the Peter Sellers caper “A Shot in the Dark,” that his early collaborator in Hollywood was the comedy director Blake Edwards, that an esteemed book critic once wrote that “Nobody can write funnier lines than William Peter Blatty.” This career in...

"I had to say Mass in my room," says Father Ray Leonard, recalling the years he served in the Tibetan region of the People's Republic of China. In that country, where the Communist government has created a state-sanctioned facsimile of the Catholic Church and driven faithful Catholics underground, Father Leonard saw firsthand how totalitarians approach religion. "Everything is controlled," he told me in an interview. "If you are part of the public church, what is known as the Patriotic Church, the church which is for the most part governed by the Communist Party, they restrict everything. They restrict the times...

SPRINGFIELD-The head of Springfield’s Roman Catholic diocese moved Tuesday to scuttle a silent protest by same-sex marriage advocates planned at the capital city’s largest Catholic church, calling their plans to pray the rosary for marriage equality “blasphemous.”Advocates for the Senate Bill 10 plan to attend a 5:15 p.m. Tuesday Mass at the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception as part of what organizers describe as a “loud Catholic Presence for marriage equality” that will wrap up a daylong rally in support of the stalled legislation.But Bishop Thomas Paprocki, head of the Springfield Catholic diocese, said anyone wearing rainbow sashes won’t be...

Pope Francis stated recently that those who accept what the Church believes and proclaim it strongly drive people away from the Church. Whither apologetics, in this environment? When a church is closed, people walk past it and can’t enter. “And, even worse, the Lord cannot be close to the people.” The same thing can happen to the whole of Christ’s Church if the “scholars of the law” block its doors – those who make an ideology out of faith and in so doing keep all others away from the gardens and wells of God’s grace. Today Pope Francis spoke about...

The Department of Defense this month took what almost certainly will be the most telling symbolic act the Obama administration ever takes. "The doors to the Kings Bay Chapel were locked on Oct. 4, 2013, with the Holy Eucharist, Holy water, Catholic hymn books and vessels all locked inside," says a lawsuit filed Monday by the Thomas More Law Center. "Father Leonard and his parishioners ... were prohibited from entering." Catholics believe Jesus Christ is present in this world in many ways, but uniquely and most especially in the Eucharist. "In the most blessed sacrament of the Eucharist, the body...

More than 1.5 million people converged on the Philippine capital on Monday for a powerful Christian sect's evangelical event, causing traffic chaos that shut down large parts of the megacity. The gathering of the secretive and politically influential Iglesia ni Cristo (Church of Christ) in the historic district of Manila forced all schools and some government offices to close. See your ad here The Supreme Court, as well as some basketball games in the highly popular college league, were also suspended, while Manila's governing authority urged private employers to give their staff a paid day off to avoid the traffic....

SSM Health Care, a St. Louis-based nonprofit hospital system that has fallen under increasing financial pressure, is preparing to lay off a number of employees. “We’re making announcements this week to our employees,” Kristen Johnson, a spokeswoman for SSM’s St. Louis-based subsidiary, said Tuesday when asked about the staff reductions. “There’s nothing more we can say. ... Out of respect for those affected, we can’t really discuss the details until we’ve had a chance to share these organizational changes with our staff.” SSM’s layoffs come at a time when other health care organizations, including St. Louis-based BJC HealthCare, have trimmed...

The Obama administration has prohibited the Kennedy family from practicing its Catholicism, and the Kennedys now intend to ask the Supreme Court to restore their First Amendment right to the free exercise of religion. Their case could become one of the most consequential in our nation's history. The issue: Will the most fundamental liberty of all -- freedom of conscience -- survive in post-Obama America? John Kennedy serves as president of Autocam and Autocam Medical, Michigan-based companies that produce automobile components and medical devices. He and his family own the companies, which employ 661 people in the United States. The...

In a stunning development, some military priests are facing arrest if they celebrate mass or practice their faith on military bases during the federal government shutdown.

The Catholic bishops of the United States have sent a last-ditch letter to members of the House and Senate asking them to protect the religious liberty of American Catholics, which is under attack by the Obama administration. Specifically, the bishops are asking Congress to use the continuing resolution that must be enacted to keep the federal government funded after midnight on Monday—or otherwise use the bill that will be needed by mid-October to increase the legal limit on the federal debt—to prohibit the effects of an Obamacare regulation that force Catholics to act against their faith. Under this regulation, many...

This past week, Rod posted a remarkable bleg over on the website of the American Conservative. Because Rod's premise is so arresting--he believes we've about reached the point at which good and decent people need to drop out of American society to form their own counterculture--and because Rod himself is such a sweet writer, I thought I'd re-post his bleg right here. To wit: You who have been following my work for years know that I keep coming around to this idea of the “Benedict Option.” In short, it means this: At what point do the conditions of moral breakdown...

ObamaCare: A group of nuns dedicated to caring for the elderly poor is suing to prevent an uncaring administration from shutting down their compassionate order over their refusal to obey the contraception mandate. There is no clearer or sadder example of the Obama administration's war on the First Amendment's guarantee of religious liberty than the demand by the Department of Health and Human Services to violate their religious consciences or pay heavy fines. HHS has ruled that if the Sisters don't offer insurance policies to their employees that include free coverage for sterilization procedures, artificial contraceptives and abortifacients, these vowed-to-poverty...