Free Republic

Militants told Christians they would be killed if they were seen in churchCatholic leaders in Mali have warned that parishes face a growing assault by Islamic militants despite attempts to enforce a peace deal in the north African country. “Our churches and chapels are now being targeted by extremists, who’ve told Christians not to gather to pray,” said Mgr Edmond Dembele, secretary-general of the Malian bishops’ conference. “The authorities are trying to reimpose control, and we may learn more about what kind of strategy is being followed,” he told Catholic News Service. “But we’re also alarmed the attacks are being...

When the extremist group known as the Islamic State (ISIS, ISIL, Daesh) was expelled from the northern city of Mosul, locals there were happy. But now, not so much, says Qassim Badran, a former employee of the local power department. The government stopped paying his salary back in 2014 when the Islamic State, or IS, group, took over the city. Even though the federal government said they would start paying civil servants again—and there are many of these because the Iraqi government is the country’s major employer—no money has arrived for Badran and he’s been busy setting up a small...

"Islamic State" militants reportedly carried out the execution-style killings in early 2015. A detained IS militant who witnessed the mass murder clued in authorities to the site.Libyan authorities have recovered the remains of 21 Coptic Christians who were beheaded by so-called "Islamic State" (IS) militants more than two years ago, the anti-IS organization al-Bonyan al-Marsous announced Saturday. The gruesome discovery was made in the seaside city of Sirte — the home town of former dictator Moammar Gadhafi, who was toppled in 2011. A statement said officials were led to the site by an IS militant who had witnessed the attack...

A housing benefit that saves clergy $800 million a year in taxes has been deemed unconstitutional by a federal judge. Under the law, housing allowances paid as part of clergy salary can be subtracted from their taxable income. Religious freedom advocates fear the ruling could force many churches in poor areas to close.MADISON, Wisconsin - A federal judge in Wisconsin has struck down as unconstitutional a law that gives clergy tax-free housing allowances, in a ruling that could have far-reaching ramifications for religious leaders, who could be facing new taxes which will threaten their ministry. Under the federal law passed...

May I respectfully recommend a study of the history of liberal Protestantism in the USA? You will soon see that today’s liberal Catholics are traveling down the same road that liberal Protestants traveled down earlier – that is, a road to destruction. It’s hard to blame the old Protestants for what they did, for they didn’t know where this road led. They were pioneers, they were cutting a path in the religious wilderness. They feared that traditional Christianity was becoming unbelievable; that if they didn’t modernize their religion by dropping certain old-fashioned doctrines, modern men and women would no longer...

Moscow, October 9, Interfax - The Russian Orthodox Church together with the Roman Catholic Church set up a working group that will restore destroyed churches in Syria. "We have set up a working group of the Russian Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church. This group is now registering destroyed churches, we will help restore them," Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Synodal Department for External Church Relations, said on the Church and the World program on Rossiya-24 (VGTRK) television channel. He stressed that "besides churches it is necessary to help people restore their homes as their houses are...

A parent claimed the headteacher's letter could be 'very dangerous'A Catholic all-girls school in London has said children should use the “preferred pronoun” of pupils who do not identify as female. Marian Doyle, headteacher at Sacred Heart High School in Hammersmith, a secondary school, wrote to parents that “as a Catholic school” they must “promote greater wholeness for transgender individuals”. This would include “using the young person’s preferred pronoun and addressing them as them with their preferred name, recognising their intent to live as the person they believe God created them to be, and refraining from any judgement.” The letter...

A North Korean defector opened up about the underground church he led and the secretive life he and other Christians had there. He also revealed that despite being offered freedom for renouncing their religion, believers in the notorious prison camps refuse to do so. Choi Kwanghyuk, who now lives in L.A., told The Christian Post in an email interview through the help of a translator with International Christian Concern on Thursday that he first learned about Christianity when he went to China to search for food. There, he was connected with a Christian missionary and began studying the Bible. Eventually,...

White Christians who are upset at NFL players who choose to protest during the playing of the national anthem are showing that they're more "white" than they are "Christian," the Rev. Jim Wallis has claimed.Wallis, the president of the progressive Christian social justice organization Sojourners who is a prominent evangelical critic of President Donald Trump, wrote an op-ed published Thursday that commented on the emotionally charged issue of NFL national anthem protests and Trump's heated opposition to them.Wallis stated that Sojourners has encouraged protests during the playing of the "Star Spangled Banner" before games as a "prophetic stance" that is "part...

It is obvious that anarchists and the havoc they are causing are having a negative impact upon our country. Their motive is typical of anarchists; they want what they call complete freedom in life. They want a society where there are no rules for living and no accountability for their actions. Many anarchists claim that no one should have an abundance of anything, and that all things should be equally divided among all people. That is why they are prize targets for those wanting to impose socialism or communism upon a free market society; they are already leaning in that...

BOSTON, Massachusetts, October 6, 2017 (LifeSiteNews) -- Jesuit priest and papal confidant Father Anthony Spadaro said that Pope Francis holds that the Catholic Church can no longer set down general norms that apply to entire groups of people. Spadaro, editor of the Italian magazine La Civiltà Cattolica, made the comment today at a conference at Boston College where liberal Cardinals met with dissident theologians to discuss strategies for implementing Pope Francis’ controversial teachings on marriage and family in dioceses across the United States. The Jesuit priest told attendees that Amoris Laetitia, the Pope's 2016 teaching on marriage and family, recognizes...

An open artistic competition for the best architectural-sculptural monument to Solzhenitsyn, to be placed in Moscow, was announced by the Russian Ministry of Culture today. The competition is being held by the Union of Moscow Architects with the support of the Ministry of Culture, by the initiative of the House of the Russian Diaspora in the name of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. The competition is timed to the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the noted author’s birth, which will be marked in 2018, and is being held pursuant to the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation on June...

Moscow, October 6, Interfax - The Roman Catholic Church believes that the religious factor is necessary in fighting terrorism and extremism. "It's impossible to conquer fundamentalism, extremism and violence while betting on secularism and ignoring religion," Archbishop Celestino Migliore, the Holy See's apostolic nuncio to Russia, said at a meeting of the committee of representatives of Orthodox Churches in the European Union in Moscow. The Vatican representative said that the responsibility of members of religious communities needed to "stave off extremist ideas in religion" increases in this situation. Metropolitan Hilarion, the head of the external church liaison of the Moscow...

A senior archbishop known for his strong opposition to the Communist regime in China has been removed from a key post in the Vatican by Pope Francis. The move is the latest in a series of overtures Pope Francis has made in recent years to seek resumption of diplomatic relations between the Vatican and the Chinese regime, which has always rejected the Pope’s authority to appoint Catholic bishops in Mainland China. Pope Francis made the surprise announcement on Sept. 28 that Archbishop Savio Hon Tai-Fai, the Secretary of the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples (Propaganda Fide) at the Vatican,...

President Donald Trump has followed through with his promise to Americans who object to the Obamacare contraceptive mandate for religious or moral reasons by officially ending the Obama-era rule.As expected, the Trump administration announced the end of the controversial mandate that has required employers to provide free contraception, sterilization procedures, and abortion-inducing drugs to their employees through health insurance plans. In early May, Trump signed an executive order protecting free speech and religious liberty for American faith groups. Part of the order directed the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to reexamine the contraceptive mandate. A senior official with...

Washington D.C., Oct 6, 2017 / 09:46 am (CNA/EWTN News).- In a set of memos issued Friday, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions outlined principles of religious freedom that federal agencies and departments are to incorporate into their work. “Our freedom as citizens has always been inextricably linked with our religious freedom as a people,” Sessions said in an Oct. 6 statement. “Every American has a right to believe, worship, and exercise their faith. The protections for this right, enshrined in our Constitution and laws, serve to declare and protect this important part of our heritage.” The memos were issued in...

Today millions of Poles are going to the peripheries of their country to say the Holy Rosary, which is a wonderful way to celebrate the feast of the Holy Rosary, it is also a demonstration of the power of the Polish Church. Could our English bishops or the Germans across one of Poland's borders be able to motivate such numbers of people? The Feast of Our Lady of the Rosary is of course 'political', it marks the destruction of Islamic forces at the Battle of Lepanto, in the same way the importance of the conversion of Languedoc through St Dominic...

The Catholic Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, Phonsie Cullinan, has retracted his criticism of the HPV vaccine over the past week and apologised for his “poor judgment”. In an abrupt u-turn, Bishop Cullinan said he was sorry if any woman felt he was slurring their integrity with his remarks on promiscuity among young people. He described as bad judgment his attacks on the vaccine, when he claimed it was “lulling” young girls into promiscuity. “That was an error of judgment. It was far too simplistic a way of looking at it,” he said. His apology was delivered in an interview...

For 2,000 years, the Catholic Church has clung faithfully to Jesus’ words, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery,” as does, “whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband.” This was an inconvenient truth for Henry VIII, who sought to have his first marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled. Henry’s insistence on a looser interpretation of the meaning of those particular words of Jesus had far-reaching consequences, leading to Thomas More’s beheading and the 500-year-old split-off of the Church of England. Free of rigid Catholic doctrine, Henry ended up taking for himself five more wives. Pope Francis,...

The Pope added that sexual differences are not a personal choice While societies must find a way to overcome the subjugation of women, pretending there are no differences between men and women or even using technology to change a person’s sex is not the answer, Pope Francis said. Using science “to radically eliminate any difference between the sexes, and, as a result, the covenant between man and woman, is not right,” the Pope said on October 5, opening the Pontifical Academy for Life’s general assembly. “The biological and psychological manipulation of sexual difference, which biomedical technology now presents as a...