Free Republic

President Donald Trump has nominated federal appeals court Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court. Kavanaugh has taken the pro-life side in important cases and has very strong pro-life Bona fides — prompting leading pro-life groups to praise him for a sterling pro-life record. President Trump applauded Judge Kavanaugh as someone who would apply the Constitution as written but Planned Parenthood launched a fierce attack the Supreme Court nominee, claiming he would “wreak havoc” on abortion. In one of his most celebrated decisions, Judge Kavanaugh ruled against the Obama HHS mandate that forced Hobby Lobby, Little Sisters of the Poor...

Since there are many legal pundits far more qualified than I to debate the merits and demerits of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, I’ll focus here on some larger, related issues.1) This is the main reason many of us voted for Donald Trump. We do well to remember that many of us who identify as evangelicals had grave reservations about candidate Trump. Many of us said that, out of the 17 Republican candidates, he was our last choice.Some of us (including myself) frequently spoke and wrote against him during the primaries. (See, for example, this video I posted on November 27, 2015,...

Paderborn circle of priests declare Abp. Hans-Josef Becker's directive 'unacceptable'PADERBORN, Germany (ChurchMilitant.com) - A group of faithful German priests is resisting their bishop over intercommunion with non-Catholics. On Tuesday, an association of priests in the western German archdiocese of Paderborn issued a statement condemning Abp. Hans-Josef Becker's decision to allow non-Catholic spouses of Catholics to receive Holy Communion on an individual basis. "We note unanimously that this directive is unacceptable," declared the priestly circle Communio Veritatis. Drawing from the Compendium to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, Communio Veritatis declared: "In general, 'to receive Holy Communion, one must be fully...

Decree recognises heroic virtues of Alexia González-Barros, 14, and Carlo Acutis, 15Pope Francis has issued decrees advancing the Causes of four candidates, including two teenagers who heroically lived the Christian virtues. At a meeting with Cardinal Angelo Amato, prefect of the Congregation for Saints’ Causes, the Pope signed a decree recognising the heroic virtues of Alexia González-Barros, who offered her sufferings from a malignant tumour for the Church. González was born in Madrid in 1971. Her parents were members of Opus Dei and passed on their faith to their five children. She made her first Communion in Rome and the...

July 6, 2018 (Society for the Protection of Unborn Children) – An MP held up a scan of his unborn baby in the Commons chamber to make a point about parental leave offered to members of parliament. A baby firstThe SNP's David Linden wanted more time to debate the principle of proxy voting - where another MP votes on a colleague's behalf, for example when they are on paternity leave - so it could be voted on later. Holding the picture aloft, Mr Linden told colleagues: "This is my daughter to be born in the autumn, so I'm particularly keen...

Monsignor Raffaele Nogaro, bishop emeritus of Caserta, says he is ready to “turn all the churches into mosques if it were useful to the cause and if it allowed us to save the lives of men and women.” And so the Catholic Church continues on its path of aiding and abetting Europe’s civilizational and cultural suicide — not unwittingly, but with its eyes open. As I show in my book The History of Jihad From Muhammad to ISIS, the Catholic Church was once one of the foremost bulwarks of defense in the jihad against Europe. But those days are long...

Pope Francis thanked Mediterranean migrant rescue teams for 'embodying the parable of the Good Samaritan'Hearts that are closed to welcoming migrants and refugees are similar to those of the Pharisees, who often would preach sacrifice and following God’s law without exercising mercy to those in need, Pope Francis said. Jesus’s rebuke of the Pharisees’ “insidious murmuring” is “a finger pointed at the sterile hypocrisy of those who do not want to ‘dirty their hands,’ like the priest or the Levite in the parable of the good Samaritan,” the Pope said in his homily on July 6 during a Mass commemorating...

CHICAGO - Hundreds of protesters led by Chicago priest Father Michael Pfleger and anti-gun activists filled a major Chicago highway for about an hour July 7 demanding that city officials do something to stop gun violence in the city. The march was preceded by a lot of discussion, right up to the march itself, on how much street space the protesters could take. Initially, they were given half of the northbound lanes of the Dan Ryan Expressway, separated by a barrier made up of trucks, emergency vehicles and uniformed officers, but after more negotiations at the scene between Pfleger, the...

LONDON, July 5, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – The United Kingdom plans to impose a nationwide ban on any practice of reparative or “conversion” therapy for individuals experiencing same-sex attraction, unwanted or not, the government announced in a new report. “[T]he abhorrent practice of conversion therapy is still alive in our country,” the Government Equalities Office (GEO) announced in its newly-released LGBT Action Plan for “improving the lives” of LGBT people. “We will bring forward proposals to end the practice of conversion therapy in the UK, and take further action on hate crime as part of our upcoming refresh of the 2016...

Please join with others to pray for PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP/VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE and AMERICA: Family, Government, Military, Business, Education, Churches, and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. I John 5:14 Religion Forum threads labeled Prayer are closed to debate of any kind

The shift in American society from admiring Christians to fearing and criticizing them provides an opportunity for self-reflection. How have we been presenting the message we believe in? Might there be a more grace-filled way?Some want to focus on personal morality and leave public morality to secular politicians. Others seek ways to guide the broader culture while still communicating grace. Rather than propose a single path, I will instead make some observations and suggestions for Christians to consider as we interact with a world that does not always share our views.Clashes Between Christ and Culture Are UnavoidableJohn Howard Yoder recounted...

In response to a Freedom of Information request from Barnabas Fund, the UK Home Office have just released figures on Syrian refugees resettled in the UK for the first quarter of this year (1 January–31 March 2018). Appalling as previous figures were, these are much worse. The UN High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) recommended 1,358 Syrian refugees for resettlement in the UK of which only 4 were Christians, representing a tiny fraction of just 0.29%. No Yazidis at all were recommended by the UN. The Home Office agreed to resettle 1,112 of these (82%), all of whom were Muslims, and...

An Orthodox church has reopened on the Aurora cruiser, one of the symbols of the October Revolution, which was used to signal the storming of the Winter Palace in October 1917 by firing an empty shot, reports the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. The Church of St. Nicholas, located in the center of the ship, was restored from archival photographs and drawings. It was originally closed in 1917. The cruiser will host regular Divine services on weekends and Church feast days. The first Divine Liturgy in 100 years was celebrated in the church on April 15 by Archpriest...

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico, June 27, 2018, (LifeSiteNews) – The Archdiocese of Albuquerque is currently hosting a conference run by a dissident priest organization with the full support of Santa Fe Archbishop John Wester. The conference, put on by the Association of United States Catholic Priests (AUSCP), is in full swing until June 28. It features Archbishop Wester as its Episcopal Moderator. AUSCP has advocated for homosexuals to be admitted to the priesthood contrary to Church teaching, championed the ordination of married men, and pressed for the ordination of women to the diaconate. The AUSCP is part of an “international coalition...

“Winston kept his back turned to the telescreen. It was safer, though, as he well knew, even a back can be revealing” (1984, George Orwell). It is no overstatement to say that we stand on the brink of a technological revolution that is going to change our world forever. This technological transformation is happening right now, and we will see significant change occur, not over the next couple of decades, but within the next couple of years. Very few people in today’s busy world are aware of just how much their lives are about to change, and how unavoidable and...

The attendance of four Roman Catholic priests from Montana at President Donald Trump's political rally in Great Falls Thursday has created a social media firestorm and apparently incurred the displeasure of the priests' superiors in the church. The four, who were seated near the front of the rally, wore their clerical garb, carried "Make America Great Again" signs, and wore VIP badges. They clapped for Trump as he doubled down on his oft-repeated slur of Sen. Elizabeth Warren as "Pocahontas," mocked the #MeToo movement, and questioned the meaning of former Republican President George H.W. Bush's "Thousand Points of Light" slogan....

Intrinsically Disordered CONGREGATION FOR TH DOCTRINE OF THE FAITH July5, 2018 At the present time there are those who, basing themselves on observations in the psychological order, have begun to judge indulgently, and even to excuse completely, homosexual relations between certain people. This they do in opposition to the constant teaching of the Magisterium and to the moral sense of the Christian people. A distinction is drawn, and it seems with some reason, between homosexuals whose tendency comes from a false education, from a lack of normal sexual development, from habit, from bad example, or from other similar causes,...

The Catholic church is being used as a pawn in a well-orchestrated plan to radically alter the Christian identity of European nations through mass migration, said Bishop Athanasius Schneider in a bombshell interview last week. Schneider, who serves as auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, told the Italian daily Il Giornale that the current migrant crisis “represents a plan orchestrated and prepared for a long time by international powers to radically alter the Christian and national identity of the peoples of Europe.” To achieve their objectives, these powers abuse “the true concept of humanism and even the Christian commandment of charity,”...

“Entrusting children to so-called homosexual couples constitutes in the last analysis a moral abuse of children, the smallest and most defenseless,” said Bishop Athanasius Schneider in an interview with Italian media last week. Mincing no words, the bishop said gay adoption “will go down in history as one of the greatest degradations of civilization. Those who daily combat this gross injustice are the true friends of children and the heroes of our age.” An auxiliary bishop of Astana, Kazakhstan, Schneider told the Italian daily Il Giornale that the “Catholic Church, just like every human person with good sense and sound...

In view of the “paradigm shift” taking place during this pontificate, one that breaks with the Church’s teaching and tradition, how should a Catholic respond? Is it legitimate to resist Church authority, including even the Pope? Chilean author José Antonio Ureta offers some in his new book, Pope Francis’ Paradigm Shift: Continuity or Rupture in the Mission of the Church? — An Assessment of his Five-year Pontificate. Mr. Ureta, what made you want to write this book? I think a lot of ordinary, good Catholics are distressed with all the changes they see with this papacy.... Some of them say:...