Free Republic

Emergency Contraception at Catholic Institutions: Bishops Can No Longer Claim Ignorance by Dr. Brian KoppFebruary 24, 2015Photo courtesy of Mike Mozart. The February 2015 Linacre Quarterly (the official journal of the Catholic Medical Association) features a groundbreaking study by Chris Kahlenborn, MD of The Polycarp Research Institute titled Mechanism of action of levonorgestrel emergency contraception. The study, contrasting the theoretical basis on which emergency contraception (otherwise known as “Plan B”) is claimed to function with the facts and statistics of the most recent research outlining the mechanism by which they cause early abortions, is sure to cause heartburn among...

The last words out of their mouths were “Lord Jesus Christ.” Samuel Tadros is a senior fellow at Hudson Institute’s Center for Religious Freedom and the author of the book Motherland Lost: The Egyptian and Coptic Quest for Modernity. He talks with NRO’s Kathryn Jean Lopez about the 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians killed on February 14 in Libya by ISIS and about the future of Christianity in Egypt and the region. Kathryn Jean Lopez: What is the most important thing for Americans to know about what happened to those 21 Coptic Christians a little over a week ago? Samuel...

Swearing in of the Swiss Guard at the Vatican on May 6, 2014. Credit: Daniel Ibáñez/CNA. Vatican City, Feb 24, 2015 / 02:17 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The commander of the Pontifical Swiss Guard says the group of soldiers charged with protecting the Pope is on high alert and ready to act if any threat from ISIS materializes. “We are ready to intervene. Our job is security. and as gendarmes we are well organized. We are ready if anything happens,” said Cristoph Graf. At age 54, Graf is married with two children. Yet he and the other members of the Swiss...

Washington D.C., Feb 22, 2015 / 04:37 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The brutal murder of 21 Coptic Christians in Libya at the hands of ISIS last week is shining a light on the reality faced by many of Egypt’s Christians on a daily basis. “These 21 victims, they were not the first and they will not be the last. There is a flowing river of Christian blood in the Middle East,” said Mina Abdelmalak, one of the organizers of a D.C. candlelight prayer vigil outside the White House on Ash Wednesday. The prayer vigil commemorated the 21 Coptic Christians beheaded last...

Whether President Barack Obama is truly a Christian has been a hot topic for debate recently, especially after the mainstream media attempted to trip up pro-life Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker on the question. The question of whether anyone is truly a Christian person has more to do with faith than anything else. Does the person in question truly have an authentic relationship with Jesus Christ and acknowledged the fact that he died on the cross to save humanity from our sins and bridge the gap sin caused between ourselves and God. While that question has more to do with worldview...

Like everyone else who cares more about the facts than his own opinions, I’ve recently read Graeme Wood’s excellent Atlantic article “What Isis Really Wants.” Those of you making do with excerpts and pull quotes, stop, and go read the whole thing. That it renders the president’s statements about ISIS absurd is the least of the article’s accomplishments. No one but a small coterie of leftist knuckleheads believes what Obama says on this subject anyway — though it’s unfortunate that the president himself is part of that coterie. Among the many things in the piece that inspire thought is Wood’s...

Rome on high alert with Islamic State just 300 miles from ItalyAbout 500 extra troops have been stationed around historic sites in Rome after ISIS made threats against the city last week. Italy, which is just 300-miles from jihadi-controlled territory in Libya, was referred to by the terrorists as “the nation signed with the blood of the cross” in a recent video. ISIS has made repeated references to conquering Rome in its various messages, although there is some debate about whether “Rome” in fact refers to a symbolic enemy, or perhaps Turkey or the United Sttaes. However, according to USA...

If you haven’t been following Barronelle Stutzman’s case in Washington State, you need to be. She is the florist being sued by the state attorney general for refusing to participate in a gay wedding. The attorney general is trying to compel her to ignore her Christian faith and to participate in gay weddings. If she refuses, he is threatening the full coercive power of the state to force her to do it. She stands to lose everything—her home, her savings, her business, her livelihood—if she does not comply. I have an article today at CNN.com explaining the situation. The conclusion...

In the time since I filed my last column from up here in the Arctic wastes, “physician-assisted dying” has been legalized by a unanimous decision of the Canadian Supreme Court. The decision reversed the Court’s own hard-reasoned position, upholding the law in 1993. It is stayed for one year to allow our Parliament a legislative response. This actually makes things worse. The only remaining live question is whether there will be any restrictions at all on euthanasia, and the likely answer is no. In 1988, our Supreme Court vacated certain restrictions on abortion that had been retained in the extremely...

VATICAN CITY — The Islamic State’s beheading in August of the journalist James Foley stirred global outrage, fury and despair. But for many of his fellow Roman Catholics, Mr. Foley’s death in Syria transformed him into a symbol of faith under the most brutal of conditions. One Catholic essayist compared him to St. Bartholomew, who died for his Christian faith. Others were drawn to Mr. Foley’s account of praying the rosary during an earlier captivity in Libya. Even Pope Francis, in a condolence call to Mr. Foley’s parents, described him as a martyr, according to the family. Then came an...

Three times the Evangelists preserved our Lord’s words in the original Aramaic: When He cried out from the Cross, “My God, My God" When He raised from the dead the daughter of Jairus When He healed the man who had been deaf from birth That “Ephphatha”—“Be opened”—in the last instance, was a sign that our Lord opens human consciousness to a full awareness of God. The Latin word for deaf—surdus—gives us “absurd,” and the ultimate absurdity is to deny the existence of God and His appeal to the human soul. I recently had the privilege of preaching at the funeral...

This article caught my eye--Six Ways Mormons Can Enjoy the Spirit of Lent.  Why would Mormons want anything to do with Lent?--something Mormons have historically associated with paganism creeping into the church shortly after the age of the apostles.  Well, if American evangelicals are now attracted to such things, Mormons will do the same. Notice the way in which the author of this essay (Kelsey Berteaux) explains how easily the Lenten season can be made to fit right in with Mormon notions of works-righteousness ("grace coupled with obedience to the laws and ordinances of the gospel") . . . Though...

Students at Kings College London (KCL) have successfully campaigned for the removal of a window featuring former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey, an alumnus of the college, on the grounds that his stance on gay marriage makes him “homophobic”. The move comes despite Carey’s reputation as a liberal while he was Archbishop, ushering in the ordination of women priests for the first time in the Church’s history. The front windows of KCL’s Strand campus, which line the famous London thoroughfare for 90 metres feature head and shoulders images of 50 well known alumni of the College, including former Prime Minister...

SAN FRANCISCO — The archbishop of San Francisco sent a letter to California lawmakers on Thursday asking them to respect his right to hire people who uphold Catholic teachings. Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone wrote the message in response to a letter sent to him earlier this week by California lawmakers urging him to remove from a teachers’ handbook morality clauses they say are discriminatory and divisive. “Would you hire a campaign manager who advocates policies contrary to those you stand for, and who shows disrespect for you and the Democratic Party in general?” Cordileone asked the lawmakers in the letter.

Act of Solidarity Is Intended to Obtain Peace in Middle EastWith Ash Wednesday yesterday marking the start of Lent, Chaldean Patriarch Louis Raphael I has invited Muslims to join Christians in their Lenten fast, reported Fides. In order to obtain “as soon as possible the gift of peace, stability and a dignified lifestyle for our country and for all the Middle East,” the patriarch wrote to his “Muslim brothers and sisters” urging them to join Christians in fasting for a few days during the Lenten season. “The season of Lent,” the patriarch said in a statement, “is a propitious time...

Pope Francis’ homily for the latest consistory of cardinals meeting in Rome this week is being called a re-statement of his programme for his pontificate. Fr. Thomas Rosica, his English language spokesman, wrote on Twitter: “More than anything I’ve heard from (the pope) today’s homily is his mission statement.” Let us assume for a moment that the pope knows the implications of what he is saying, and that the people closest to him are telling the truth when they say, repeatedly, that the things that are happening are happening at his behest, and examine what this “mission statement” has to...

The South-African cardinal discounted a recent report in Crux that suggested African support for allowing such couples to receive the Eucharist.ROME — A leading African cardinal says the continent’s bishops want the upcoming Vatican synod to zero in on strengthening the Church with good families — before getting sidetracked on other issues, such as the contentious debate over allowing Communion for divorced-and-remarried couples. Cardinal Wilfrid Napier of Durban was in Rome last week for a meeting of African bishops — known as the Symposium of Episcopal Conferences of Africa and Madagascar, or SECAM — with Pope Francis. In a Feb....

Against Backdrop of ISIS Beheadings, Egypt's Coptic Catholics Consecrate First Church in Sinai Bishop says Church strengthened by martyrdom of its brothers. NEW YORK (Feb. 19, 2015)—"The Church in Egypt has been strengthened by the murder of our brothers in Libya." Such was the reaction by Coptic Catholic Bishop Youssef Aboul-Kheir of Sohag to the beheading of 21 Orthodox Coptic men in Libya by ISIS. The guest workers in Libya "suffered a holy death with prayers on their lips. They went to their deaths just like the early Christians,” the bishop told international Catholic charity Aid to the Church in...

The American progressive coop has already taken place here in America and won the day, and I challenge anyone anywhere to prove what I am saying is wrong. However the poetic justice in all of this is that Obama and the Left's delusional lawless and godless Utopian agenda and visions are heading the world straight into the Day of the Lord (Rev. 6-19) with the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse to greet them (Rev. 6). O Fools!! There can NEVER be a Utopia established by fallen men apart from the saving grace of the Lord Jesus Christ (Dan. 2:43-44, 7:13-14,...

SAN FRANCISCO (KPIX 5) – Students and parents from schools controlled by the Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco protested at Saint Mary’s Cathedral on Ash Wednesday, saying the church should stay out of teachers’ bedrooms and drop proposed morality clauses in teacher contracts. On Ash Wednesday, one of the holiest days on the Catholic calendar, the students and parents are hoping Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone will change his mind on the clauses, as the church heads into 40 days of Lenten reflection. "We’re here because if Jesus were alive today, he’d be standing right next to us,” Mairead Ahlbach, a student...