Free Republic

Catholics participating in the Peoples Climate Movement march in the nation’s capital will be able to pray at a Mass and visit their representatives on Capitol Hill as part of two days of activities. March organizers are expecting hundreds of thousands of people to travel to Washington April 29 in a broad showing of grass-roots support for federal government action in addressing climate change and to oppose the rollback of environmental standards by the administration of President Donald Trump. Catholic organizations are planning to greet hundreds of Catholics as well. The Franciscan Action Network and Interfaith Power & Light of...

Although the Catholic Church has taught since its inception that marriage is between one man and one woman for life, the new superior of the worldwide Jesuit religious order, Fr. Arturo Sosa Abascal, claims that despite Jesus Christ's words about marriage (Matthew 19: 3-9), "no one had a recorder to take down his words," which must be "contextualized," and that doctrine implies a "hardness" like "stone" while "human reality is much more nuanced" and "never black and white." Fr. Absacal, from Venezuela, was elected superior of the Jesuits, the Society of Jesus, in October. The Catholic religious order for men...

WASHINGTON (CNS) – When the Conservative Political Action Conference, popularly known as CPAC, met near Washington in late February, the event’s main organizer did everything possible to separate the annual gathering from a fringe group it said it wants no part of and whose members don’t reflect their values. “There is a sinister organization that is trying to worm its way into our ranks and we must not be duped,” said Dan Schneider, executive director of the American Conservative Union, which hosts the CPAC gathering, referring to the self-described “alt-right” movement, whose followers espouse white nationalism, populism and white supremacy....

Mexicans who help build President Donald Trump’s planned border wall would be acting immorally and should be deemed traitors, the Catholic Archdiocese of Mexico said on Sunday, turning up the heat on a simmering dispute over the project. In a provocative editorial, the country’s biggest Archdiocese sought to increase pressure on the government to take a tougher line on companies aiming to profit from the wall, which has strained relations between Trump and the Mexican government. “Any company intending to invest in the wall of the fanatic Trump would be immoral, but above all, its shareholders and owners should be...

Pope Francis gets a lot of attention for his modern views on Catholicism, but he's now backing an ancient and controversial practice in the church. The pope told priests that they should be willing to call on an exorcist if they feel it's warranted, but they should make sure the person is actually possessed first. There are no official statistics, but exorcisms are reportedly on the rise — at least in the U.S. Father Vincent Lampert of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis said, "The problem isn't that the devil has upped his game, but more people are willing to play it."...

Days after he called on Congress to pass a school choice bill, President Donald Trump is set to visit a Catholic school in Orlando Friday, along with Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, where hundreds of students attend the school using a voucher from the state's tax credit scholarship program. During his stop at St. Andrew Catholic School, Trump is expected to once again tout the Sunshine State's program, as he did in his recent address to Congress. Under Florida's plan, the state uses public dollars to pay for private K-12 school tuition for low-income students and students with disabilities. The...

Catholics in America make up about 25 percent of the population. Yet when it comes to negative stereotypes of religion, Hollywood targets us almost 100 percent of the time. Nowhere is this more true than with gay-themed entertainment. The hostility shown toward all things Catholic made us wary when we heard about ABC's miniseries on the history of the gay rights movement, "When We Rise." As last night's opening episode confirmed, we were right to be on guard.

MEXICO CITY: The Catholic Church in Mexico on Sunday accused the government of adopting an attitude of fear and "submission" over US President Donald Trump's immigration measures, which it labeled "terrorism." Mexican authorities "only make declarations and promises, their reactions are lukewarm and they also show fear and even worse, submission," read an editorial in the Church's From the Faith weekly. The editorial, entitled "Migrant Terrorism," criticized Trump's immigration measures, which aim to expel millions of undocumented migrants from the United States. The Trump administration issued tough new orders Tuesday for a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigrants, putting nearly all...

One of the newest “social warriors” is a 13 year old seventh grade girl who currently attends a private Catholic school in New Jersey only because a judge has ordered the school to rescind its order expelling her. Of course the media sides with a selfish family that doesn’t care about anything but its own satisfaction; but when do the constitutional rights of a religious institution prevail? Here are the facts. The girl, who is described as an excellent basketball player, was not able to play for her school this year because it was not fielding a girls’ team in...

Pope Francis needs to take tougher action against the United States’ most influential Catholic in Rome, Cardinal Raymond “Breitbart” Burke. The renegade cleric is not only undermining Francis’s reformist, compassionate papacy, and gospel teaching as it applies to refugees and Muslims, but the rebel prince of the church is also using his position within the walls of the Vatican to legitimize extremist forces that want to bring down Western liberal democracy, Stephen K. Bannon-style. Simply put, the Vatican is facing a political war between the modernizing Pope Francis and a conservative wing that wants to reassert white Christian dominance. Burke...

Teaching about Islam taught me many things. I enjoyed being a priest helping the people for some years. However, deep inside I was not happy and I felt that there was something not right. Fortunately, and it is God’s will, some events and coincidences in my life led me to Islam. I used to think of Egypt as a country of Pyramids, camels, sand and palm trees. I actually took a charter flight to Hurghada. Shocked to find it similar to some European beaches, I took the first bus to Cairo where I spent the most wonderful week in my...

In honor of National Catholic Schools Week, President Donald Trump is praising the nation’s Catholic educators as “vital to our success and prosperity as a country.” The president states: In recognition of National Catholic Schools Week, I want to extend my heartfelt appreciation to all of the dedicated Catholic school administrators, teachers, priests, and support organizations who work tirelessly to build and sustain quality Catholic schools across the Nation.

The New York Times and the U.S. bishops appear to have very different understandings of President Trump's motivations, but do seem to arrive at an equally negative conclusion. First, here is Times' editor David Leonhardt's take, titled "Trump Flirts With Theocracy": Let’s not mince words. President Trump’s recent actions are an attempt to move the United States away from being the religiously free country that the founders created — and toward becoming an aggressively Christian country hostile to other religions. ... On Friday afternoon, of course, Trump signed an executive order barring refugees and citizens of seven majority Muslim countries...

Francis, Parolin continued, has “taken a very great role of leadership in the global issues of the present world. And he is recognized as such, as a global leader… which was very clear in the process of climate change….”

As President-elect Donald Trump's campaign manager, Mrs. Kellyanne Conway helped pull off one of the most stunning political victories in U.S. history. So, why do the feminists hate her? Why isn't she being praised as a feminist icon by CNN or the gals from The View? Could it be because Kellyanne Conway is outspokenly pro-life?  And here's another hopeful sign:  President Donald Trump's top advisor will be an Irish-American, happily married Catholic mother of four who makes breakfast every morning for her kids and then goes to Mass. She's a daily communicant! And there's more: Kellyanne Conway reportedly took Donald Trump to meet Father George Rutler, the Anglican...

You only think you know what won the election for Donald Trump. Hillary’s corruption? The betrayal of the American Dream? Vladimir Putin? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Let me tell you the real story, and the person behind it. Elections are won by the marginal voter, the swing voter, the guy right at 50 percent. And in American politics he’s generally a Catholic. That’s the story this time, too. It wasn’t the white Evangelicals. They went overwhelmingly for Trump, but that was also true in 2012 when they weren’t even sure Romney was Christian. They aren’t the swing voters. Catholics, on the...

Remember the rule: in Muslim countries, be careful to conform your behavior to Muslim sensibilities. And in non-Muslim countries, be careful to conform your behavior to Muslim sensibilities. A priest in Italy has caused uproar after announcing there would be no Christmas nativity scene at the local cemetery this year because it could offend Muslims and atheists.

On Dec. 4, the second Sunday of Advent on the Christian calendar, Fox's "Family Guy" mocked two-thirds of the Holy Trinity as only Fox can. In atheist Seth MacFarlane's gag, Jesus Christ had a human son who he mocked for being bullied at school, comparing that to the horror of the Crucifixion. When his son called him a "dick," he suggested that God the Father was a bigger "dick" for sending him to his death. On that same day, The New York Times ran an enormous article that sprawled over three pages of the Arts & Leisure section with the...

The good news is that an impressive number of Catholics ignored the Vatican, Francis, the antipope, and all parties named above by voting for Donald Trump rather than Clinton on November 8. Now that the outcome of Election 2016 has been determined, guess where that leaves a participating Satan? Dumped flat onto his ever-going keester; stalled on the road for the time being and abandoned in the middle of nowhere, where he truly belongs.

Much has been made of Donald Trump’s problems with a few voting groups — female voters, blacks and Hispanics, and young voters, in particular. And, to be sure, they are all problems. But relatively speaking, his biggest problem actually appears to be with a different group: Catholics. Yes, the man who once feuded with the pope (how soon we forget that actually happened) is cratering among Catholics.