Free Republic

The wife of former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R), Callista Gingrich, is going to be announced as the next ambassador to the Vatican, potentially this week, according to reports. The announcement is pending approval of the Office of Government Ethics, but is targeted to be made before President Donald Trump meets with Pope Francis on 24 May in Rome, according to the report. Newt Gingrich, a strong supporter of President Trump, acknowledged to reporters that his wife is “under consideration” for the Ambassadorship and he would be “very excited for her.” Have a terrific weekend.

The Archbishop of Newark, Cardinal Joseph W. Tobin said, “We are the ‘no’ to a nation who is heartless, who would deport people separating them from their families and their loved ones simply because they are victims of a broken system.” NEWARK, N.J. - Beneath the curved wooden ceiling at Bethany Baptist Church, New Jersey’s faith leaders vowed to stand alongside those targeted under the White House agenda - and build their own wall of resistance to President Trump’s policies. “Not on our watch will anyone have to stand or fight alone,” said the church’s pastor, Timothy Jones on Thursday...

Evan Michael Minton, a former legislative aide in California, wants to change from being a woman to a man. As part of the process, Minton sought a hysterectomy at Mercy San Juan Medical Center, part of the Dignity Health Care chain. As a Catholic institution, Mercy San Juan does not perform elective hysterectomies. A spokeswoman for the hospital explained that such procedures may only be performed to treat a serious medical problem, and when there is no alternative treatment available. Mercy immediately referred Minton to another hospital within the Dignity chain—one that is not Catholic—and the procedure was performed within...

In this excellent piece, George Neumayr refers to the rupture of relations between the Vatican and al-Azhar that took place during the time of Pope Benedict. As I explained here, that rupture took place because Pope Benedict dared to speak out about the Muslim persecution of Christians. By contrast, Francis energetically defends Islam, and leaves the persecuted Christians twisting in the wind, so he is acceptable to al-Azhar. The worst part about this is the fact that because this man is Pope, all too many Catholics, including some in positions of high authority, treat him as if he were a...

As my colleague Roger Aronoff reports, the media are livid that President Donald Trump is dismantling former President Barack Obama’s “climate change” legacy of deindustrialization and federal government control of energy resources. Meanwhile, factions of the U.S. Catholic Church and some Protestants are brainwashing church members into accepting the non-Christian idea that religious faith involves a belief in an Earth Spirit. A so-called “Little White Book” was handed out in a number of American Catholic churches on April 16, supposedly to offer reflections based on the Resurrection narrative of the Gospel of Mark. Instead, the book included a number of...

Has the pastoral rubber met the theological road? Today, the Los Angeles Times’ Tom Kingston reports that the debate over Pope Francis’ Amoris Laetitia and the proposals to allow divorced-and-remarried Catholics to fully participate in the sacraments has produced a conservative reaction that threatens to divide the church. Some have even begun to whisper one word in particular — schism: As Francis enters his fourth year in office, his conservative opponents have chosen to stand and fight over his 2016 apostolic exhortation titled “Amoris Laetitia,” or “The Joy of Love,” in which he suggested bishops can use discretion in granting...

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….”