Free Republic

The Washington Post produces a daily tabloid called “Express.” The paper is distributed free, mostly to commuters at Metro stops. It gives one something to read on the train ride downtown. The Washington Post claims express has a daily readership of almost 300,000. Here’s what greeted DC commuters–a paid advertisement from Catholics for Anti-Catholicism Choice–on the second day of the Fortnight for Freedom:Charming. (More here.)Today is the feast of Sts. Thomas More and John Fisher. Maybe we can all send them a little request to intercede for our nation and our leaders. And I’m sure the folks at the Washington...

Psalm 86:11,12 Teach me Your Way, O Lord, that I May Walk and Live in Your Truth; Direct and Unite my Heart {Solely, Reverently} to Fear and Honor Your Name. I will Confess and Praise You, O Lord my God, with my Whole (United) Heart; And I will Glorify Your Name Forevermore.

It's amazing how quickly much of society seems ready to change the definition of an age old institution that has been at the core of its growth and development, without so much as a second thought. No societal institution has been as responsible for the growth and development of every individual, and of society as a whole, as has traditional marriage, the bedrock upon which stable children, stable families and flourishing personal and societal growth spring forth. One must also ask whether we would be equally as unquestioning were someone to suggest changing the other age old definition that is...

One of the most interesting ways to read the Bible is through the lens of typology. Typology is where a person or event in the Old Testament foreshadows a greater person or event in the New Testament. The word “typology” comes to us from St. Paul himself, in Romans 5:14, where he referred to Adam as a “type” of Christ. So let’s get started on this most interesting study.Desert WanderingsRemember the story about the Israelites coming up out of the water of the Red Sea and wandering in the desert for 40 years?  They came upon bitter water in...

I'm not usually one to share my blog on FR (I haven't FReeped regularly in a long time), and I wasn't sure if this should be posted in Bloggers or Religion. But I wanted to share my thoughts on the Charleston shooting, how it pertains to media coverage, homosexuality, and Christianity in current events, and what the Bible has to say about persecution in the end-time hour. Drunken with the Blood of the Saints: By Philip Cottraux So he carried me away in the spirit into the wilderness: and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full...

Remember the secretive, liberal, French, Swiss, German meeting of the circle around Card.   Kasper’s proposal at the Gregorian University? They met to strategize about how to use the upcoming Synod, et al.Remember the recent meeting of presidents of African bishops conferences who strongly defended perennial Catholic teaching?Now I see this from NCRegister: Polish and Eastern Bishops Discuss Need to Uphold Catholic Teaching Ahead of SynodROME — During recent meetings which were held separately, both the Polish bishops and the Eastern Catholic bishops from Europe have discussed the family in view of the upcoming synod on the family and are...

Rome (AFP) - Hundreds of thousands of Italians gathered in Rome Saturday to demonstrate against gay unions and the teaching of gender theories in schools, as Prime Minister Matteo Renzi tries to push a civil union bill through parliament. Holding aloft banners reading "The family will save the world" and "Let's defend our children", a sea of people crammed into the San Giovanni square near the Italian capital's historic centre to support family values. The square, which can hold an estimated 300,000 people, was overflowing with the young, elderly and parents with toddlers, an AFP photographer said, with many more...

Who is this that approaches like the dawn, as beautiful as the full moon, as pure as the sun…Song of Solomon, 6:10The third tallest statue in the United States bears the image of the Blessed Mother and stands astride the jagged Rocky Mountain Continental Divide 3,000 feet above the city where I grew up. The massive 90-foot tall, sixty-ton steel statue is called Our Lady of the Rockies, overlooking Butte, Montana. For being one of the world’s great engineering marvels, she is a gem that is slowly being discovered. Since she was built in 1985, people from all over the...

God is exalted in his power. Who is a teacher like him? Who has prescribed his ways for him, or said to him, “You have done wrong”? Remember to extol his work, which men have praised in song. All mankind has seen it; men gaze on it from afar. How great is God – beyond our understanding! The number of his years is past finding out. (Job 36:22-26)

Praised by Jesus Christ. Both now and forever. Amen. It will take much time to digest this Encyclical; others will do it much better than this writer. There are nearly 80,000 words of which 21 are the Holy Name of Jesus who shows up for the first time in paragraph 82. I shall remain a member of the Flat Earth Society and hold the belief that man is not responsible for any significant change in climate. An actual scientific past reveals a tropical Greenland and fossils of palms and ferns in Alaska proving that climate changes. I do not deny...

Courtesy of Vox Cantoris, we are alerted to the astonishing end of the encyclical, Laudato Si. I wonder if any paragraph worse than this could have been written by any Pope. The text is below. This is not a draft. It is the official version from the Vatican site. 246. At the conclusion of this lengthy reflection which has been both joyful and troubling, I propose that we offer two prayers. The first we can share with all who believe in a God who is the all-powerful Creator, while in the other we Christians ask for inspiration to take up...

6/18/2015 9:00:00 AMORDINATION INTERVIEWNewest priest galloped into vocationWidowed horse doc, father of three, to be ordained DEACON LESSER on a cattle drive in Montana and just before his ordination. Read his "Seminarian's Diary" columns at www.evangelist.org under "Specials." BY KATE BLAINEDITOR Most future priests don't have to sit down with their children and make sure everyone's OK with it before going ahead with ordination. In January, Deacon Richard Lesser did just that with his three children: Evan, a 30-year-old rancher living in western Kansas; Craig, 25, who just graduated from veterinary college in Colorado and joined a practice in...

On May 10, the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera published an interview with Archbishop Victor Fernández who is a close collaborator of Pope Francis. He is said to have ghost-written Pope Francis’ first Apostolic Exhortation, Evangelii Gaudium and to be now involved in the drafting of the Pope’s encyclical on questions concerning the environment. He had previously worked together with then-Cardinal Bergoglio in Argentina, and headed Cardinal Bergoglio’s team redacting the touchstone Latin-American bishops’ (CELAM) document of Aparecida in 2007. His words are therefore to be taken very seriously, since, more than most people, he knows the Pope’s mind. This...

Last May in Italy, a Muslim boy of African origin beat a 12-year-old girl during school because she was wearing a crucifix around her neck. The African schoolboy, who had only started to attend the school approximately three weeks earlier, began to bully the Christian girl — “insulting her and picking on her in other ways all because she was wearing the crucifix” — before he finally “punched the girl violently in the back [1].”What is it about the Christian cross that makes some Muslims react this way?The fact is, Islamic hostility to the cross is an unwavering fact of...

Before anything else… don’t just bash the new encyclical.   Some people are having rancisull-fledged spittle-flecked nutties today.  I suspect that some of them are people who are happy only when they are unhappy.Dear readers… take a deep breath.There are good things in it.   Yes, there are bad things in it too.   Pope’s don’t get all things right all the time.  Sometimes Popes are… GASP… wrong, especially when they stray onto unfamiliar turf.Also, let me say that Popes can and should write about the environment.   It is the Pope’s job to explain the theological and spiritual dimensions of...

Pope Francis’ second encyclical “Laudato Si” was released this morning by the Holy See…and it’s pretty epic.  It’s on ecology, the environment, creation, and much, much more!  Despite some in the media reducing its contents to whatever is socio-politically controversial (ahem…climate change) there’s much more to this encyclical than what the media will no doubt focus on.  Here are 10 things in Laudato Si (“Praise be to you”) you won’t hear about from the media…and this is just the tip of the iceberg!  1. Transgenderism “The acceptance of our bodies as God’s gift is vital for welcoming and accepting the entire...

Nikki Brooks, a Black woman who claims to be a Christian and to have held leadership rolls in several churches, has published an astonishing video stating she has no sympathy for the unborn black baby targeted for abortion. “What I am about to say, I am a Christian, I’ve served in a Pastoral capacity in three churches, I uh, I am an active minister, and um, I don’t make apology for what I am about to say,” Brooks states in her video. She is apparently upset that the Black community, which is being targeted for abortion by racist eugenics groups...

A museum curator here in New York recently showed me some extraordinary documents and I touched them with awe, albeit with cotton gloves.  There was Benjamin Franklin’s annotated copy of the Constitution, and a long letter by Washington refusing to run for a second presidential term, because all he had to commend himself was his character, which was no longer of interest to an ungrateful populace that already had reduced politics to material interests.  In pencil on a small piece of paper, Lee proposed a meeting with Grant at Appomattox to present his sword.More riveting, at least to me as a cleric, was...

Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors captured their first NBA title since 1975 last night in a 105-97 win over the Cleveland Cavaliers. Curry and Andre Iguodala, the Finals' MVP who called the Warriors a "team of believers" in post-game interviews, teamed up for 50 points, while the Cavs' LeBron James added 32. Even after the greatest achievement in basketball, Curry knows there's a much bigger prize in life, long after the buzzer sounds. In 2013, Curry talked to the Fellowship of Christian Athletes for the March issue of its bi-monthly magazine, writing that his faith identifies him more...

The largest Protestant denomination in the United States has passed a resolution stating that marriage is between one man and one woman regardless of what the U.S. Supreme Court concludes later this month. Messengers for the Southern Baptist Convention voted Tuesday afternoon in favor of Resolution 5, which among other things, prayerfully calls for the Supreme Court to "uphold the right of the citizens to define marriage as exclusively the union of one man and one woman." "Southern Baptists recognize that no governing institution has the authority to negate or usurp God's definition of marriage," read Resolution 5, in part....