Free Republic

OHIO VALLEY — A clip of actress Martha Plimpton’s exuberance over the “best” abortion she has ever had played on the television above a gas-station counter somewhere along U.S. Route 422 between Ohio and Pennsylvania. A woman with a name tag designating her as the manager rolled her eyes and said to no one in particular as she went about stacking the shelves behind the counter, “And they wonder why people don’t vote for Democrats around here anymore.” Plimpton, age 46, is best known for her role in the 1980s Steven Spielberg classic kid adventure movie The Goonies. She made...

“Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us now and at the hour of our death. Amen.” The world heard you, courageous people of Poland, even though the international media stubbornly pretended not to. “Thousands of Polish Catholics formed human chains on the country’s borders Saturday, begging God “to save Poland and the world” in an event many viewed as a spiritual weapon against the “Islamisation” of Europe.” (AFP, Oct. 7, 2017)

September 12, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) – Pro-life Catholic leaders are defending President Trump against Pope Francis after the Pontiff questioned Trump’s pro-life views, despite the fact that Trump has racked up major pro-life accomplishments during his short time in office. “If Pope Francis is so concerned with the commitment of others to the defense of preborn children, he should consider his own words and actions, as well,” said Michael Hichborn, founder and president of the Lepanto Institute. The Pope questions the President’s pro-life credentials On the return flight from his visit to Colombia, Pope Francis criticized Trump over his plans...

OHIO VALLEY — A clip of Martha Plimpton's exuberance over the "best" abortion she ever had played out on the television overhead of a gas-station counter somewhere along U.S. Route 422 between Ohio and Pennsylvania. A woman with a name tag noting her as the manager rolled her eyes and said to no one in particular as she went about stacking the shelves behind the counter, "And they wonder why people don't vote for Democrats around here anymore." Plimpton, 46, is best known for her role in the 1980's Steven Spielberg classic kid adventure movie "The Goonies." She made her...

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...

A high profile Vatican consultant has publicly departed from Catholic teaching on homosexuality, saying God made “LGBTQ people … who they are.” Father James Martin, a Jesuit priest who is the editor at large of America Magazine as well as an adviser to the Vatican's Secretariat for Communications, made the comment to the pro-homosexual organization PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) on August 18.  Martin spoke on the occasion of PFLAG honoring him with its 2017 Flag Bearer Award for making what it called “lasting contributions to the safety and/or equality of people who are LGBTQ, their families, and...

Evangelical Christians have unprecedented access to President Donald Trump’s White House and are “on speed dial” with the administration, according to an activist who prayed over the president in the Oval Office. The evangelical community overwhelmingly backed the Republican in November’s election, and Trump has been quick to repay it. The president has signed an executive order on religious liberty and cut funding to abortion providers overseas....

Social media giant Facebook blocked more than two dozen conservative Catholic pages in a 24-hour period, some with millions of followers, saying only they were “suspected of suspicious activities.” Facebook seemed to target only conservative Catholic pages with a significant following, since almost all had between hundreds of thousands and up to six million followers, according to Catholic News Agency (CNA), which broke the story.

Imagine that President Trump gave a speech praising a strong Europe. Imagine that he called forthrightly on Russia to stop its aggression in Ukraine and join the community of responsible nations. Imagine that he embraced the mutual-defense commitment, so-called Article 5, of NATO. Imagine that he extolled the role of women in our society. Imagine that he said we share the hope of every soul to live in freedom. Imagine that he celebrated the free press and ceaseless innovation and a spirit of inquiry and self-criticism. That’s the speech that Trump gave in Warsaw during his European trip for the...

Catholic voters know better than their bishops, it would seem. Leading American bishops have complained about the “harshness” of Trump’s campaign rhetoric and called for an end to deportation of aliens until the “broken” system can be fixed. Yet, despite this opposition from the Church’s hierarchy, Trump won 52% of the Catholic vote (to Hillary’s 45%), a historic margin for a Republican. How to explain this contradiction? Real simple. The laity get it better than the bishops. Trump’s nationalism is fully consistent with Catholic social doctrine as it has developed in the last 126 years. It is the leaders of...

In addition to visits from the president and first lady, U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-Jefferson, has had his local parish priest praying by his bedside. Fr. Timothy Hedrick, parochial vicar at St. Catherine of Siena Parish in Metairie, was in Washington taking a summer course at Catholic University when Scalise was shot by a lone gunman Wednesday during a baseball practice with other Republican congressmen. When news broke of the mass shooting, Hedrick rushed to MedStar Washington Hospital Center in northeast Washington to attend to Scalise and pray with his wife, Jennifer. Hedrick has also served as a...

When 19 college guys go to Jamaica for spring break, they usually hit the bar and the beach. Not Nicholas Morrison and his friends. Their trip to Montego Bay this March was far more medieval. Every morning they rose at 5:30 a.m. and prayed. Then they visited abandoned children with disabilities and dug an irrigation trench to protect the kids’ homes from flooding in the coming summer rains.

The First Lady met with the cardinal and the Slovenian ambassador after her visit with Pope Francis. Since the meeting of Donald and Melania Trump with Pope Francis, there has been much speculation about whether Melania is Catholic. She asked the pope to bless her rosary and also spent time in prayer before a statue of the Virgin Mary, causing plenty of media voices to wonder about her faith. Some hours after their visit with the pope, as we noted here, a spokesperson for the First Lady, Stephanie Grisham, confirmed that indeed, Melania Trump professes the Catholic faith, though she...

The Tennes family has been farming in Michigan for generations. They grow all sorts of crops at the Country Mill Farm – organic apples, blueberries, pumpkins, sweet corn. And for the past seven years, Steve Tennes and his family have sold their produce at the farmer’s market owned by the city of East Lansing. But this year – city officials told the devout Catholic family that their blueberries and sweet corn were not welcome at the farmer’s market – and neither were they. Last year, someone posted a message on Country Mill’s Facebook page inquiring about whether they hosted same-sex...

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...