Free Republic

On March 20, I wrote a post about my growing suspicion that the Anonimi della Croce blog — purportedly run by a pseudonymous Italian priest called “Fra Cristoforo” who claimed sources within the pope’s inner circle — was in fact a form of disinformation, used by those who would seek to discredit any who shared the many “secrets” disclosed there. One of the blog’s contributors, who wrote under the name of Finan, wrote a polite response to my critique, and also sent me an email hoping to reassure me of the authenticity of the blog’s proprietor.I advised him at the time...

Several Catholic outlets around the world – including Infovaticana and Chiesa e postconsilio – have reported that Cardinal Óscar Rodríguez Maradiaga, coordinator of the pope’s “council of nine“, has made some condescending and disrespectful remarks about the four dubia cardinals. The moderate and characteristically gentle Italian journalist and Vatican specialist Marco Tosatti went so far as to say that the elderly Honduran cardinal and papal adviser “attacked” these faithful cardinals “with great violence”.On 25 March, Maradiaga gave an interview on the Swiss-Italian Radio Television Station RSI’s “Strada Regina” program in which he said the following (translation courtesy of Mr. Andrew Guernsey): I think, in the...

Declarations in the Vatican Congregation for the Clergy's recent document "The Gift of the Priestly Vocation" have been called "disrespectful," "ambiguous" and "insulting" by the Association of U.S. Catholic Priests. In a statement released April 19, the 1,200-member Ohio-based organization charged that "the terms 'homosexual tendencies' and 'deep-seated homosexual tendencies' are ambiguous and disrespectful of the personhood of those who identify with a homosexual orientation." The terms appear in the Dec. 8, 2016, document's section titled "Persons with Homosexual Tendencies.""We find it also unfounded and insulting," the group said, adding that the clergy congregation document "implies that ordained priests with...

Cairo (Agenzia Fides) - Gunmen opened fire on an Egyptian police checkpoint near Saint Catherine's Monastery in Sinai late on Tuesday, April 18, killing one policeman and wounding four officials. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. After an exchange of gunfire, the attackers fled the scene, and some of the gunmen were wounded in the shootout. The monks in the Monastery, which is several kilometers from the checkpoint, had only heard the sound of gunfire, confirming that the assault did not cause damage to the monastic community. According to Egyptian media, that contacted the spokesman for the monks, Father Gregorios,...

I've mentioned before how astonished I am at what seems to be a convergence of opinion among students of Bible prophecy regarding the Revelation 12 Sign and its significance.  I find this fascinating because I've never seen this sort of consensus among watchers before regarding specific signs and dates.  In times past, dates that were set have come and gone because it was usually lone rangers espousing them: Harold Camping, Edgar Whisenant, William Miller, Ellen G. White, and to a certain extant in recent times - John Hagee and Jonathan Cahn.  Dr. David Reagan had a very perceptive thing...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP, VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE and AMERICA: Government, Family, 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. —1 John 5:14 Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind. Please join us in prayer each day. Today we pray for the President's family.

In a huge win for the Students for Life group at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington, the school has officially cut ties with the nation’s largest abortion provider, Planned Parenthood. In an email to the campus today (full text below), Whitworth University president Beck Taylor wrote: ­­­­­“I recently instructed the Dornsife Center for Community Engagement not to renew that relationship. This is the only formal partnership the university currently has with Planned Parenthood. At the end of the current academic year, Whitworth will no longer offer credit-bearing service-learning placements or internships with the organization.” Whitworth University bills itself as a...

A new student group at Southern Methodist University in Texas launched a fundraiser recently for the abortion group Planned Parenthood. Dallas News reports the student abortion advocacy group began as a response to the university pro-life club and its annual cemetery of the innocents display. Student Claire Krizman, who began the fundraiser for the abortion group, said she has been disturbed by the pro-life display on campus for the past three years. “There was no education component to it,” Krizman told the news outlet. “There wasn’t a ‘Here are your options’ or ‘This is why it’s wrong’ based on their...

The "Bible Answer Man" radio show program with Hank Hanegraaff has been booted from Bott Radio Network over concerns regarding biblical accuracy, following Hanegraaff's conversion into the Eastern Orthodox Church. "We want to make sure that our listeners know that the programming that we have on Bott Radio Network is thoroughly biblical," said BRN President Richard P. Bott II, a member of Lenexa Baptist Church in Lenexa, Kansas, according to Baptist Press. BRN had reportedly been broadcasting the "Bible Answer Man" since the 1980s, even before Hanegraaff joined the show in 1989. "We live in strategic times," Bott told BP....

Vatican City, Apr 18, 2017 / 07:58 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Just two months after Pope Francis faced intense backlash for his reforms when critical posters were plastered around Rome, a new set went up around the city over Easter, this time praising the Pope for his commitment to mercy and inclusion. “Thank you Pope Francis! For your true Christian engagement with love and mercy, as demanded by Jesus so often in our Holy Bible.”This was the phrase written on some 300 posters that were hung April 14 around Rome’s city center and near the Vatican, and which will remain until...

Robert Cardinal Sarah recently gave an address that bears the image of a prophetic warning about the nature of the Church’s present crisis of faith. He says plainly and without hesitation numerous things that are certain to inspire many – and to annoy many others. I am sure he aims at both effects. His indictment harkens back to the title of his first book, God or Nothing. Catholics inflict great harm upon the Church when they exalt themselves and put their own theories above God and his revealed doctrines.This attitude, seen in all areas of the life of the Church,...

Catholic Priest Hit with Car by Clinic Volunteer at Columbus OH Abortion Center On April 8, 2017, Father Joseph Klee, a Parish Priest at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, was injured and almost run over by Michelle Davis, a local abortion clinic volunteer, as she steals Father Klee’s lawfully displayed anti-abortion signs from the public sidewalk. The incident took place in front of Founder’s Women’s Center in Columbus, OH. Video footage clearly depicts Ms. Davis stealing Father Klee’s pro-life signs and attempting to speed off with them. Ms. Davis injures Father Klee by almost running him over as he attempts to...

The Russian edition of volume XI of the Opera Omnia of Benedict XVI Ratzinger was published this Easter (a common date this year for East and West) and Pope Benedict XVI had been asked at the beginning of the project, in 2015, to write a preface -- which he did. Corriere della Sera provided the Italian version of the Russian publication, which we now present in English: Benedict XVI [Corriere della Sera, April 15, 2017] Nihil Operi Dei praeponatur - "Let nothing be set before the Divine Worship." With these words, Saint Benedict, in his Rule (43,3), established the...

Has the pastoral rubber met the theological road? Today, the Los Angeles Times’ Tom Kingston reports that the debate over Pope Francis’ Amoris Laetitia and the proposals to allow divorced-and-remarried Catholics to fully participate in the sacraments has produced a conservative reaction that threatens to divide the church. Some have even begun to whisper one word in particular — schism: As Francis enters his fourth year in office, his conservative opponents have chosen to stand and fight over his 2016 apostolic exhortation titled “Amoris Laetitia,” or “The Joy of Love,” in which he suggested bishops can use discretion in granting...

WARSAW, Poland – A Czech bishop has accused his government of prioritizing trade ties over human rights after it delayed granting asylum to dozens of Chinese Christians seeking protection in the country. Auxiliary Bishop Vaclav Maly of Prague, chairman of the Czech church's Justice and Peace Commission, said in an email to Catholic News Service April 13 that the "usual popular objection" cannot be applied to the asylum-seekers. "There are no terrorists among them and no doubts about their work ethic," he said. "An act of goodwill would enable Czech officials to show we decide our own affairs and won't...

Join with fellow FREEPERS to pray for PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP/VICE PRESIDENT MIKE PENCE and AMERICA: Government, Family, 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. 1 John 5:14 Thank You for this AMERICA Prayer Vigil Community and answered prayer. Religion Forum threads labeled Prayer are closed to debate of any kind.

FULL TITLE: Baby and three teenagers are shot at an Alabama church's Easter carnival after fight breaks out in crowd of 900 Four young people - including a baby under the age of one - were shot at a church's Easter carnival in Alabama on Saturday night. The toddler and three teenagers were not critically injured after gunfire erupted at the Cathedral of the Cross A.O.H. Church of God on the border of Birmingham and Center Point,AL.com reported. They were all taken to hospital, as was a pregnant woman knocked to the ground in the chaos that followed the gunfire.

President Donald Trump has increasingly infused references to God into his prepared remarks — calling on God to bless all the world after launching strikes in Syria, asking God to bless the newest Supreme Court justice, invoking the Lord to argue in favor of a war on opioids. He's also taken other steps to further cultivate a Christian right that helped elect him, granting new levels of access to Christian media and pushing socially conservative positions that don't appear to come naturally to him. One of the first interviews Trump sat for as president was with the Christian Broadcasting Network’s...

On this Resurrection Morning, John begins his prophetic bombing run by exposing the conversion of Hank Hannagraff (The Bible Answer Man) to Eastern Orthodoxy, followed by strafing runs on the beliefs of those who call themselves "Christian", plus Frankie Schaeffer (son of the great apologist Frances Schaeffer) who adds to the emergent church movement by embracing spiritual mysticism and liturgy. Appropriately, he then acquires and targets the cup of trembling that we know as Israel, recognizing her taking of the Temple Mount in 1967, and the upcoming 50 year celebration in the land recognizing that achievement. To wrap up, he...

Pentecostals Come Home to Rome — Eastern Rome, That Is. Through studying the Church Fathers, an Arizona pastor leads part of his congregation into Catholicism. TUCSON, Ariz. — The phrase “Swimming the Tiber” has been used to describe Protestants coming into the Catholic Church. But a group of Pentecostals in Arizona are coming “home to Rome” through Constantinople, leaving their Assembly of God church for the Byzantine Catholic Church.