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What is true in Spain, is also possible in Italy. A priest of the Archdiocese of Palermo, where Pope Francis recently appointed a "Bergoglianist" as archbishop, has "blessed" a lesbian couple. "I hope that the church will one day bless homosexual relationships," said the priest.

Transcript and video of Donald Trump's speech today at Bishop Wayne T.Jackson's Great Faith Ministries in Detroit,MI, an African American congregation which invited him to speak. The transcript and video are provided for future reference. The speech, delivered in a very humble manner by Mr. Trump, showed his true heart for this country and all of its people.

The Surprising Reason Why More Americans Are Not Going To ChurchThe standard narrative of American religious decline goes something like this: A few hundred years ago, European and American intellectuals began doubting the validity of God as an explanatory mechanism for natural life. As science became a more widely accepted method for investigating and understanding the physical world, religion became a less viable way of thinking—not just about medicine and mechanics, but also culture and politics and economics and every other sphere of public life. As the United States became more secular, people slowly began drifting away from faith.Of course,...

When Sister Lucia warned Cardinal Caffarra in the 1990s that “the final battle between the Lord and the reign of Satan will be about marriage and the family,” she did not reveal the particular reality unfolding now: a relentless drive by Church leaders to loosen the Church’s constant teaching on the impossibility of Holy Communion for public adulterers (the divorced and “remarried”) and cohabiters who refuse to abandon their illicit sexual relations, spearheaded by a Pope with a divorced and “remarried” sister and cohabiting nephew. The just-announced reorganization of the Vatican’s marriage and family departments, the subject of my last...

While it’s perfectly okay for people to have different opinions about what churches should say from the pulpit, especially with regard to politics, what’s not okay is for the federal government—rather than congregations themselves—to be in charge of what is said. And it won’t do to dangle the threat of taxing the church if it won’t comply. That’s why the Johnson Amendment has to go. The Tax Code’s restriction on political speech by non-profit organizations is popularly known as the Johnson Amendment, named after its sponsor, Lyndon Johnson, who maneuvered the levers of senatorial power to insert the provision into...

Robert Spencer says behavior is "suspicious in the extreme"KETTERING, Ohio (ChurchMilitant.com) - Three Arab men were caught recording footage in Ascension Catholic Church in Kettering, Ohio Sunday, claiming they were only "studying" Christianity — but JihadWatch's Robert Spencer is calling their behavior "suspicious in the extreme." The men, who were visiting their families from Saudi Arabia, had all passed background checks and, according to church authorities, simply breached "proper etiquette." While their actions did arouse suspicion, we believe their actions were simply a breach of proper etiquette," a statement on Ascension's website read Thursday morning. "While current evidence suggests that...

Father Josiah Trenham mentioned “intimidation” to the parishioners of St. Andrew Orthodox Church, and he was quite right: Islamic supremacists and jihadis routinely traffic in intimidation. That’s based on a Qur’anic command: “And prepare against them whatever you are able of power and of steeds of war by which you may strike terror in the enemy of Allah and your enemy and others besides them whom you do not know, whom Allah knows” (Qur’an 8:60). When they practice this intimidation, they generally find Westerners — especially Christian leaders — unwilling and unable to do anything in response but submit to...

One of the state's largest and most liberal churches could lose its tax-exempt status because of an anti-war sermon that a former rector delivered two days before the 2004 presidential election, according to the Internal Revenue Service. In his sermon, the Rev. George F. Regas did not urge parishioners at All Saints Episcopal Church to support either George Bush or his opponent, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. But he was sharply critical of the Iraq war and Bush's tax cuts. The IRS in a June 9 letter warned the church that its tax-exempt status was in jeopardy because the federal tax...

My children die from a lack of knowledge from rejecting My Spirit for as My word speaks truth the denial of it grieves me and My Messenger of Truth their comforter. So do not despise the gift of prophecy or any other gift for they all come down from the Father of lights and these are all found in My Spirit of Truth and to deny Him is to deny Me as well for I and The Father are one . . . 1 Thessalonians 5:20-21 20 Do not scorn or reject gifts of prophecy or prophecies [spoken revelations-words of...

According to a report of the French senate, 2.800 churches across the country, many of them centuries old, will be demolished as restoration costs exceed the cost of demolitions over the next years. This church, Église Saint-Jacques d’Abbeville, a Neo-Gothic masterpiece in Abbeville, Nord-Pas-de-Calais-Picardie dating back to 1868, was demolished for a total cost of 350,000€ in 2013. The reasoning: It was much cheaper to demolish it than it would cost to restore. As the number of Frenchmen in France continues to decline due to record-low birth rates, high emigration and Muslim immigration, so do the members of catholic faith,...

Restorers, after clearing away centuries of dirt, discovered the Church of the Nativity had a seventh mosaicAn Italian team has completed restoration of Crusader-era mosaics in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. The mosaics will only be unveiled publicly after work on lighting, electricity and a fire alarm system. The work involved removing the layers of centuries-worth of soot and dirt – a result of the smoke of candles lit by pilgrims coming to venerate the site traditionally believed to be the birthplace of Jesus – from about 1.55 million tiny mosaic pieces that were reviewed and restored. “I...

Last week, a young Christian male asked me a pretty direct question. He wanted to know whether I ever worried that my blunt commentary on social media was “turning people away from Christianity.” I thought it was an honest question. So I gave him an honest answer. I told him that I believe the problem is just the opposite of what he considers it to be. In other words, it isn’t occasional blunt commentary that turns people away from Christianity. It is the constant displays of Christian cowardice that make people both reticent to join and quick to attack us....

<p>A church in Des Moines has filed a federal lawsuit seeking to strike down as unconstitutional a portion of a 2007 Iowa law and a similar Des Moines city code section that could apply transgender bathroom rules to churches.</p> <p>The Fort Des Moines Church of Christ filed the lawsuit Monday in federal court in Des Moines against the Iowa Civil Rights Commission and the city. The church asks for an order that keeps the state and the city from enforcing the rules that would allow biological males who identify as women from using women's bathrooms, showers or changing rooms and the same for females identifying as men.</p>

A muezzin’s call to prayer reverberated inside the sixth-century Istanbul landmark Hagia Sophia for the first time in 85 years on July 1. The building in the city’s historic Sultanahmet district broadcast the azan from its minarets following July 1’s Laylat al-Qadr, or night of power, marking the first revelation of the Quran to the Prophet Muhammad. The broadcast of the morning call to prayer from within Hagia Sophia is likely to reignite controversy over the use of the building, which was designated a museum in 1935 under Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the modern Turkish Republic. Although the...

Is a church a place of public accommodation and if so – are congregations required to follow anti-discrimination laws regarding gender and sexual orientation? That’s the issue raised by a brochure published by the Iowa Civil Rights Commission. They contend that any church that opens its doors to the public would be required to comply with sexual orientation and gender identity laws. It’s unclear when the Commission’s brochure was published, but it clearly outlines their interpretation of the 2007 Iowa Civil Rights Act – known as Iowa Code

The assembled Presbyterians no doubt thought they were being wonderfully open-minded and ecumenical; they did not realize that Wajidi Said was openly proselytizing for Islam. “Lead us on the straight path” is straight from the Fatihah, the Opening, the Qur’an’s first chapter and the most common and oft-repeated prayer in Islam. Islamic scholars identify the straight path with Islam itself. And in invoking “Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad,” Said sounded beautifully ecumenical himself to the ranked Presbyterians, aglow in their bloomin’ primness, but in reality he was reflecting the Islamic belief that those figures and the other Biblical...

The Bishop of Stockholm has proposed a church in her diocese remove all signs of the cross and put down markings showing the direction to Mecca for the benefit of Muslim worshippers. Eva Brunne, who was made the world’s first openly lesbian bishop by the church of Sweden in 2009, and has a young son with her wife and fellow lesbian priest Gunilla Linden, made the suggestion to make those of other faiths more welcome.

Official Documents of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church Back Encyclical of the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church ΕλληνικάEnglishрусскийfrançais ENCYCLICAL OF THE HOLY AND GREAT COUNCIL OF THE ORTHODOX CHURCH Crete 2016 In the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit With a hymn of thanksgiving, we praise and worship God in Trinity, who has enabled us to gather together during the days of the feast of Pentecost here on the island of Crete, which has been sanctified by St. Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles, and his...

Christian homes and property have been attacked by a Muslim mob in Egypt over rumours a house under construction was being turned into a church. A large group of Muslims gathered around the house, owned by Coptic Christian Naim Aziz, in Qarayat al Bayda village near Alexandria after Friday prayers on June 17, chanting: "By no means shall there be a church here". "A great deal of fanatic Muslims gathered in front of the new house of my cousin, Naim Aziz, during its construction because of a rumour spread in the village that this building would be turned into a...

U.S. Rep. Mark Sanford – who was running unopposed for the Palmetto State’s first congressional district (following a hard-fought 2013 special election win) – saw an abnormally-high percentage of people oppose him via write-in votes. Specifically, 6.59 percent of the first district electorate wrote in the name of someone other than Sanford on their ballot. That total dwarfed the write-in percentages put up against other unopposed GOP candidates at the statewide level – including treasurer Curtis Loftis (1.25 percent) and adjutant general Bob Livingston (1.03 percent).