Free Republic

DEMOCRATS HAVE A CATHOLIC PROBLEM Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on the Democrats and Catholics:Heath Mello has divided the Democratic Party. This is unusual given his low profile: he is running for mayor of Omaha, Nebraska. What makes him controversial among Democrats are his pro-life convictions.Senator Bernie Sanders, an Independent, has taken the high road, prudently saying that although he favors abortion rights, there should be room for Mello in the Democratic Party. Tom Perez, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, disagrees—there is no room for people like him.Perez speaks for the base of the Party. The Daily...

Confused by what's going on in the Senate for Judge Gorsuch's Supreme Court confirmation? We hear ya. So we'll let Jimmy Stewart and Mufasa explain...

ROME — When Stephen K. Bannon was still heading Breitbart News, he went to the Vatican to cover the canonization of John Paul II and make some friends. High on his list of people to meet was an archconservative American cardinal, Raymond Burke, who had openly clashed with Pope Francis.In one of the cardinal’s antechambers, amid religious statues and book-lined walls, Cardinal Burke and Mr. Bannon — who is now President Trump’s anti-establishment eminence — bonded over their shared worldview. They saw Islam as threatening to overrun a prostrate West weakened by the erosion of traditional Christian values, and viewed...

Abortion is not just another public policy issue: it is the foundational human rights issue. It is also not just another Catholic issue: it is regarded as “intrinsically evil.” It matters, then, when assessing the spike in Catholics in the Congress, whether they are faithful to Church teachings on abortion. The results are not encouraging (data on incumbents were taken from the National Right to Life ratings; data on newly elected members were taken from National Right to Life, Planned Parenthood and NARAL). Of the 168 Catholics in Congress, 80 are pro-life and 88 are pro-abortion. Party affiliation is largely...

If President Obama’s appearance at the Notre Dame commencement in 2009 sparked an unprecedented uproar among American Catholics, imagine what inviting President Trump to graduation might provoke. That concern is making Notre Dame's president, Fr. John Jenkins, think twice about making a pitch for the incoming U.S. president to receive an honorary degree, an appearance that almost any school would normally covet — and one that the iconic Catholic university has been more successful than others in securing. “I do think the elected leader of the nation should be listened to. And it would be good to have that person...

A week after the election, the Huffington Post published a blog entry in which Progressive Christians suggested what like-minded Christians should do in order to “take back their faith.” Still reeling from the election in which Donald Trump was elected president, several progressive Christians pondered the necessary steps to draw a stronger contrast between their brand of kindhearted progressive Christianity, and the kind of conservative, evangelical Christianity that helped elect Donald Trump. The responses were predictably representative of left-wing Christianity, which centered on re-emphasizing social justice issues and identity politics as the “loving,” compassionate, anti-Trumpian counterpart to the hate-filled Christianity...

Late at night the day after the election, I picked up a phone call from one of my sons. He called to share how he and his friends felt moments after the election had been called for Mr. Trump. There was an urgent and fearful tone to his voice that I have never sensed before from him.It did not take long before we got right to the core of his concerns: “Dad, my friends and I are very worried. Some of us were crying last night and wondering if Mr. Trump would continue to say the kinds of hurtful things...

It appears that many Vatican officials are unhappy with Donald Trump’s presidential victory. … Corriere della Sera reported Nov. 10 that, according to its research, most in the Vatican were backing Hillary Clinton as the ‘lesser evil.’ Trump, on the other hand, was considered ‘unelectable’ due to his ‘aggressive chauvinism,’ in addition to his threats to deport 11 million illegal Mexican immigrants and ban Muslims from immigrating to the United States. Now that the ‘greater evil’ has won, the Vatican is viewing the United States as ‘angry and radicalized,’ Corriere della Sera wrote…. A ‘lot of incomprehension’ and ‘bitter shock’ were...

Senate Majority Leader advisor Andrew Bremberg will lead president-elect Donald Trump’s healthcare transition team, according to Inside Health Policy. Bremberg currently advises Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and was an advisor for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker during his presidential bid. Bremberg was part of the transition team for former GOP president candidate Mitt Romney, according to the Washington, D.C.-based publication. For eight years, Bremberg served in the Department of Health and Human Services. From 2005 to 2007, he was special assistant to the Immediate Office of the Secretary and from 2001 to 2005, he was special assistant to the executive...

Senate Majority Leader advisor Andrew Bremberg will lead president-elect Donald Trump’s healthcare transition team, according to Inside Health Policy.Bremberg currently advises Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and was an advisor for Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker during his presidential bid. Bremberg was part of the transition team for former GOP president candidate Mitt Romney, according to the Washington, D.C.-based publication.For eight years, Bremberg served in the Department of Health and Human Services. From 2005 to 2007, he was special assistant to the Immediate Office of the Secretary and from 2001 to 2005, he was special assistant to the executive secretary....

One has to admit that Donald isn’t everybody’s idea of a pious Presbyterian. Though he still maintains some loose connection with his parents’ confession, his behaviour is, how shall I put it, more Playboy than Presbyterian. And yet he won over Christians by a wide margin: 52 per cent of all Catholics, 58 per cent of all Protestants and 82 per cent of all evangelicals voted for him. The Catholic vote is particularly notable. After all, some 40 per cent of US Catholics are Hispanics, and, putting it mildly, Trump didn’t go out of his way to endear himself to...

Conservative Christians gave Donald Trump 79 percent of their votes, Ralph Reed, founder and chairman of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, told reporters Wednesday. That split left 15 percent voting for his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

In 2016, most of the polls were wrong, period. And polls predicting that Hillary Clinton would run away with the Catholic vote proved more wishful than accurate. In the run-up to the election, only the IBD-TIPP poll consistently pointed to a Trump win among Catholics, as CRUX noted last week. Almost all the others suggested a significant margin of victory for Clinton. Now that the voting is over, however, preliminary results indicate Trump decisively won a majority of those self-identifying as Catholics, by 52 to 45 percent. By contrast, President Barack Obama won Catholics narrowly, by a margin of 50...

For the last eight years the Democrats who have ruled our lives have used the power of their offices to undermine Christianity in general and the Catholic Church in particular. They are trying to force nuns to provide abortion and contraception benefits in the insurance policies provided for themselves and their workers; and things as bad as that. They have changed our rights to speak out against these attacks to “hate speech,” to try to silence us. They are pounding at the doors of our churches to force Catholic priests to perform Gay marriages or risk losing their tax exempt...

For the first time since 1984 a Republican presidential candidate has a lead among Catholic voters; and it is substantial. Donald Trump has at least 50% of this voting bloc while Hillary Clinton is at 37% which is less than what Walter Mondale got while losing 49 states in 1984. This lead is the 3rd largest since this measure was first taken in 1952; it is worth noting that no Republican has gotten more than 48% of the Catholic vote and lost; and no Democrat has gotten less than 47% of the Catholic vote and won. http://cara.georgetown.edu/presidential%20vote%20only.pdf In the states...

San Diego statement came after a parish bulletin warned that Catholics who voted Democrat risked damnationIt is not a mortal sin to vote Democrat, the Diocese of San Diego has said after a local church bulletin stated that it was. According to the website Sacramento Bee, the Church of the Immaculate Conception in San Diego issued a flyer inside its weekly bulletin which warned that parishioners risk “descending into hell” if they vote Democrat in the presidential elections. The flyer pointed out that the Democrats violated Church doctrine on abortion, same-sex marriage, embryonic research, euthanasia and human cloning. In an...

The Sunday bulletin of San Diego’s Immaculate Conception Catholic Church on Oct. 16 wasn’t very different from all the others. Seven pages. A welcome to newcomers. A Mass schedule. But there, between the prayers of healing for the ill and the deployed and a reminder about a parent-child chastity luncheon for ages 11 and up, was an extra flier. On it was printed a memo, written in Spanish and English, and titled, in part, “How to vote like a Catholic.” “It is a mortal sin to vote Democrat … immediately after death the souls of those who die in a...

SAN DIEGO — The Sunday bulletin of San Diego’s Immaculate Conception Catholic Church on Oct. 16 wasn’t very different from all the others. Seven pages. A welcome to newcomers. A Mass schedule. But there, between the prayers of healing for the ill and the deployed and a reminder about a parent-child chastity luncheon for ages 11 and up, was an extra flier. On it was printed a memo, written in Spanish and English, and titled, in part, “How to vote like a Catholic.”....

It seems referring to the Catholic Church as a “Middle Ages dictatorship” and religious Americans as “backwards” might just cost you in the polls. Donald Trump is up 13 points against Hillary Clinton among American Catholics, according to a new IBD/TIPP Presidential Election Tracking Poll out Nov. 2. The same poll reports that Trump is up 22 points with American Protestants.