Free Republic

Another Christmas season is upon us and once more the forces of secularism and political correctness are out in full force. Schools, government offices and even businesses across the country have been intimidated into submission by organizations like ACLU and Freedom From Religion. They are fearful of even mentioning anything remotely connected with Jesus Christ and Christmas. They overlook some very important facts. Jesus was far more than a religious figure. He is the central figure of Western Civilization. Impact is an overused word, but no one in our history has had a greater impact. A full understanding of his...

The ‘vigilantes’ of east London may have been Pythonesque, but the issue is deadly seriousThings are not going well in the world of vigilantism. A story from the Guardian tells us: The court had been told that Horner and the 23-year-old man drove alongside Joshua Bilton and Anna Reddiford in Bethnal Green and yelled at them through a megaphone. Horner shouted: “Let go of each other’s hands. This is a Muslim area!” The couple initially believed it was a joke but the group repeated the warning until they let go of each other’s hands. When they started holding hands again...

Chicago's Daley Plaza, long home to privately maintained Christmas and Hanukkah displays, now has a giant letter "A" representing the atheist and agnostic community. Nestled between baby Jesus in his manger and a towering menorah with seven candles illuminated, the 8 1/2-foot-tall letter and accompanying signs erected for the first time last week are meant as a counterweight to the religious displays, according to an official with the Freedom From Religion Foundation, the organization responsible for the exhibit. "The month of December does not just belong to religion or Christianity," said Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the Wisconsin-based foundation. "We're...

As a host of the daytime talk show "The View," Barbara Walters questioned why politicians, including the presidents, swear on a Bible while taking office when there is separation of church and state. "That is very true, but it starts almost with the oath of office which usually ends with 'So help me God,'" Walters said during the talk show, after actress Jane Seymour's remarks over a new political ad by Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas in which he apologizes for backing President Barack Obama's signature health care law, or "Obamacare," and also highlights the importance of the Bible...

President Obama is pivoting once again to decrying the alleged sin of income inequality -- the left's perennial and favorite class-warfare theme. At the same time, the religious left is becoming more vocal in American politics, couching its opposition to income inequality in theological rhetoric. When Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin took shots at Pope Francis for his apparent critique of capitalism, leftist religious scholar Reza Aslan pounced. Writing in The Washington Post's "On Faith" section, Mr. Aslan contends that Jesus preached "revolutionary social teachings" whereby "the rich will be made poor, the strong will become weak, and the powerful...

Imagine if an activist group blanketed a major city with 55 billboards urging that illegal aliens go back to their own country. Or that homosexuality is a crime against nature. Or that Muslims are responsible for most of the world’s terrorist attacks. The mainstream media would be all over the story. Organizations – like La Raza, like GLAAD, like CAIR – would organize protests. President Obama would publicly condemn the billboards (while defending illegals, homosexuals and Islam). And the sponsors of the billboards would be branded a “hate group.” Yet, there has been little outrage over the 55 billboards that...

Fox News columnist rips Pope Francis, loses Catholic News Service gig Adam Shaw, an editor for the Fox News website, has been taking a lot of heat, even from some conservatives, for a rip-roaring assessment of the pope’s recent apostolic exhortation. His column is titled: “Pope Francis is the Catholic Church’s Obama – God help us,” which gives you a sense of where Shaw was coming from. But if Shaw’s Fox job is safe — hey, when Rush Limbaugh is blasting the pontiff anyone else looks tame — his other gig, as a film and video game reviewer for Catholic...

When Rudy Giuliani was mayor of New York, he came to my high school for an assembly. One of my classmates rose to ask him a question. After naming his public grammar school, he explained that he had not been taught any formal English grammar in his years there, and as a result, he found himself woefully unprepared for our high school English program. “What,� my classmate asked the mayor, “will you do about this?�Mr. Giuliani became visibly flustered. He apologized and said he was not aware that this was happening. He expressed his disproval over the school’s dereliction, and...

Father Edward T. Oakes, S.J., professor of dogmatic theology at Mundelein Seminary and University of St. Mary of the Lake, has gone to God, dying on December 6, 2013. Readers of First Things know Fr. Oakes well. Over the course of two decades he has been intimately linked with the journal, publishing essay after essay on subjects that extended from Shakespeare to original sin, from the latest movie, to the nature of evolution. Oakes wrote well on many themes, but he will surely be remembered as one of the earliest and most insightful interpreters of the extraordinary thinker, Hans Urs...

Pope Francis has laid out his plans for the Church in Evangelii Gaudium (EG). Rush Limbaugh read it and has concluded he’s a Marxist. Politically conservative evangelicals fear they’ve lost an ally in the Catholic Church. The pro-gay marriage lobby and Planned Parenthood are disillusioned after reading paragraphs 66 and 213, and rightly so. Pius X Society sympathizers are on edge after reading 108. “Left-leaning” Catholics who were hoping for a female priesthood are deflated after reading paragraph 104. Mainstream media labels him a progressive. Whose side is this man on anyway? That he’s getting the entire world’s attention is...

Father Edward Oakes, S.J., distinguished theologian, gifted writer and teacher, generous ecumenist, and our friend, has died, of pancreatic cancer, at 8:00 this morning. The announcement from the Academy of Catholic Theology, of which Father Oakes was president, reports: Father Oakes entered the Society of Jesus in 1966, and was ordained a priest in 1979. He received his doctorate in theology from Union Theological Seminary in 1987. He taught at New York University, Regis University, and Mundelein Seminary, where he was deeply loved and valued by his colleagues, students, and indeed everyone on the staff as well.

Gov. Sarah Palin’s “Good Tidings and Great Joy” book tour took her to Charlotte, NC today where she was greeted by hundreds at the Billy Graham Library. Palin had the following to say to the fine people of Charlotte: A big thank you to everyone who joined us today for a very festive “Good Tidings and Great Joy” book event at the Billy Graham Library. It was great to see our old friend Charlie from the ’08 campaign trail. He’s growing up into such a beautiful young man. I’d especially like to thank Franklin and Jane Graham and all the...

Today’s Vatican announcement that the Pope will create a new commission answers every question—except the one question everyone is asking. What we don’t know is whether the new commission will take action against bishops who fail in their own responsibilities: bishops who cover up abuse. So we don’t know whether the commission will address the root cause of the scandal. We know that the new commission will issue guidelines for handling sex-abuse issues. But we don’t know if bishops will follow those guidelines. We know that the new commission will develop “safe-environment” programs for use in diocese. But we don’t...

Lagos, Nigeria, Dec 5, 2013 / 01:02 pm (CNA).- After a shipwreck off the coast of Nigeria, a 29-year-old man survived three days at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean while constantly reciting a psalm his wife mentioned to him during their last conversation. Harrison Okene was a Nigerian cook on the tugboat Jascon 4, which was one of three vessels pulling an oil tanker. It capsized and sank about 32 kilometers off the coast of Nigeria in late May with its 12 crew members aboard. Although the shipwreck occurred in May, a video of the dramatic rescued surfaced this...

Since the release of Evangelii Gaudium there have been countless articles and commentary about the economic portions of Pope Francis’s Apostolic Exhortation. Some of the commentary has been downright bizarre, such as Rush Limbaugh denouncing the Pope as a Marxist, or Stuart Varney accusing Francis of being a neo-socialist. Not far below the surface of many of these critiques one hears the following refrain: why can’t the Pope just go back to talking about abortion? Why can’t we return the good old days of Pope John Paul II or Benedict XVI and talk 24/7/365 about sex? Why doesn’t Francis have...

<p>Thomas Williams, the onetime public face of the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order who left the priesthood after admitting he fathered a child, is getting married this weekend to the child's mother, The Associated Press has learned. The bride is the daughter of former U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Mary Ann Glendon, one of Pope Francis' top advisers.</p>

Details: The Syrian Greek-Catholic Church has three “true martyrs�. They are the “three men from Maaloula who refused to repudiate their faith,� and were killed for this reason, said Patriarch Gregory III Laham during his meeting with Pope Francis on Sunday, this according to a press release issued by the Catholic Patriarchate of Antioch and All the East, of Alexandria and Jerusalem of the Melkites.The events that led to the three men’s death occurred during fighting on 3 -7 September in the town of Maaloula.According to eyewitness accounts, men from the Syrian Free Army and the Jabhat al-Nusra Islamic Front...

A source familiar with the inner workings of the Vatican told Breitbart News on Monday that Pope Francis is likely to offer a "clarification" of his comments on economics contained in his apostolic exhortation released on November 24, Evangelii Guadium (in English, "The Joy of the Gospel"). Though the timing of such a "clarification" is uncertain, it is likely to come in the form of a speech to a group rather than in a formal papal document. The source told Breitbart News that key figures at the Vatican are already discussing the problems caused by the document's confused and inconsistent...

Pope Francis is undergoing a popularity surge comparable to the way Barack Obama was greeted by the world in 2008. And just as President Obama has been a disappointment for America, Pope Francis will prove a disaster for the Catholic Church. My fellow Catholics should be suspicious when bastions of anti-Catholicism in the left-wing media are in love with him. Much is being made of his ‘compassion’ and ‘humility,’ but kissing babies and hugging the sick is nothing new. Every pope in recent memory has done the same, yet only now are the media paying attention. Benedict XVI and John...

Taizé’s Prior, Brother Alois, and several other brothers visited North Korea, as part of a programme of visits to Myanmar, China, India and North and South Korea during October and November. The latest Taizé community newsletter talks about the group visiting all four churches in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, and praying in silence. “In the only Catholic church at Pyongyang, we were received by a lay person in charge (there was no priest there); in one of the two Protestant churches by one of the pastors; and in the Russian Orthodox church by one of the two priests,” said...

In a recent segment on his nationally syndicated radio show, Rush Limbaugh talked about the pope’s new apostolic exhortation Evangelii Gaudium. I don’t have the space to address everything Limbaugh said, but what struck me was his mischaracterization of Pope Francis's comments about economics.The fundamental problem was that Limbaugh chose to quote not what Pope Francis wrote but a Washington Post article on the exhortation, which stated: Pope Francis attacked unfettered capitalism as "a new tyranny" and beseeched global leaders to fight poverty and growing inequality, in a document on Tuesday setting out a platform for his papacy and...

It seems that not everyone in the MSM is an adoring fan of Pope Francis.This is an … interesting op-ed on the site of Fox News, which is, yes, pretty much MSM now: Pope Francis is the Catholic Church’s Obama – God help usby Adam Shaw [I admit that I haven't heard of Mr. Shaw.  I looked him up on Fox and did not discover much writing about matters having to do with the Church. See below.]Pope Francis is undergoing a popularity surge comparable to the way Barack Obama was greeted by the world in 2008. And just as...

Expressing gratitude to Pope Francis for his support for Syrian Christians, the head of the Melkite Greek Catholic Church told the Pope that “despite the woes and the quite tragic situation that we have been experiencing for nearly three years now, we want to stay and help our faithful to stay.” “You called upon us not to allow the flame of hope to be extinguished in our hearts,” said Patriarch Grégoire III (Loutfi) Laham in a recent address to Pope Francis in Rome. “We are resolved to be martyrs in this land, blood martyrs, like some of our faithful, including...

The Holy See will not share information from its internal proceedings related to clerical sexual abuse with the United Nations’ Committee on the Rights of the Child, the Reuters news agency reported. The Committee on the Rights of the Child is responsible for examining compliance with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, a 1989 treaty signed by 193 states. The Holy See signed the treaty in 1990. The United States is not bound by the treaty: although President Bill Clinton signed it in 1995, the Senate has not ratified it. “In the light of the recognition by the...

On 24 November, the Roman Bishop, Francis, issued a document, Evangelium Gaudii which the Vatican classifies as an “Apostolic Exhortation.� It’s a book, a really long (217 pages) sermon. Rome is a complicated creature with seemingly endless categories of offices, canons, decrees, laws, and instructions. Darryl Hart has a helpful summary of the various types of communications issued by the Vatican. Suffice it to say that the papacy does not issue mere advice. In this case it appears that Francis took it upon himself to go beyond more that a synod on the “new evangelization� had concluded in 2012. He can...

St. Petersburg, December 4, Interfax - Vitaly Milonov, the chairman of the St. Petersburg parliament's legislation committee, has sent an appeal to the Russian Foreign Ministry and Federal Migration Service proposing a simplification of the procedure of obtaining Russian citizenship for Europeans, who have been insulted spiritually and culturally in their countries. A simplification of the procedure of granting a living permit and Russian citizenship to foreign citizens, whose right to live according to traditional cultural and spiritual values are being infringed upon by the authorities of the country they reside in, has been proposed, Milonov told Interfax on Wednesday....

Organization Seeks to Preserve Religious Heritage SitesA recent report by the “Future of Religious Heritage” states that an estimated 600-700 churches in the Netherlands will be decommissioned by 2018. The “Future of Religious Heritage” organization is comprised of associations, government bodies, universities and religious communities that are working together to preserve religious sites across the European continent. According to L’Osservatore Romano, which published the statistics, the organization also estimated that 400-500 Protestant churches will also be decommissioned. Currently, the Bishops of the Netherlands are in the Vatican on their Ad Limina visit, which is required by the heads of dioceses...

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has filed suit against the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) regarding a case in a Muskegon, Mich. hospital. According to the ACLU, Tamesha Means was 18 weeks pregnant in December, 2010, when her water broke. A friend brought her to Mercy Health Partners in Muskegon. Ms. Means subsequently made two more trips to this hospital, and her baby, born prematurely, died. According to a New York Times piece, …Dr. Douglas W. Laube, an obstetrician at the University of Wisconsin Medical School, described the care Ms. Means received as “basic neglect.” He added,...

Website funding from Polonsky Foundation includes Bodleian's 1455 Gutenberg Bible and aims to put 1.5m pages onlineSome of the rarest and most fragile religious texts in the Vatican and Bodleian libraries, including ancient bibles and some of the oldest Hebrew manuscript and printed books, are being placed online in a joint project by the two great libraries, which will eventually create an online archive of 1.5m pages. The website launched on Tuesday with funding from the Polonsky Foundation includes the first results of the four-year project, including the Bodleian's 1455 Gutenberg Bible, one of only 50 surviving copies of the...

Lincoln, Neb., Dec 3, 2013 / 12:03 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Critics of Pope Francis' warnings about capitalism are reducing him to a “cartoonish socialist” to diminish the seriousness of his message, Bishop James D. Conley of Lincoln, Neb. has said. “The Pope affirmed that markets must be understood and administered in justice, with due regard for the sovereignty and solidarity of families and human dignity,” Bishop Conley said in a Dec. 2 column for the Republican-leaning website National Review Online. He added that the Pope’s Nov. 26 document “Evangelii Gaudium” did not reject capitalism, but instead rejected “idolatry of any...

J’accuse, of course, is the title of the most famous open letter ever published, in which Emile Zola, the most celebrated French author of his time, charged the French government, in January 1898, with illegally sentencing Captain Alfred Dreyfus to life in prison. Dreyfus, who was Jewish, had been charged with spying and convicted of treason, and Zola charged that Dreyfus had been framed precisely because he was Jewish. The Italian writer Giulio Meotti’s decision to give his new book the title The Vatican against Israel: J’accuse is no coincidence. His topic, like Zola’s, is institutional anti-Semitism – the institutions,...

Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press with David Gregory, Cardinal Timothy Dolan of New York said that the Catholic Church ideally would have backed Obamacare but for President Obama’s attempt to cram down violations of the First Amendment on Obamacare’s back. “We bishops have been really kind of in a tough place because we’re for universal, comprehensive, life-affirming healthcare,” Dolan said, emphasizing that church support for universal government healthcare dated back to 1919 in the United States. “So we’re not Johnny-come-latelies. We’ve been asking for reform in healthcare for a long time.” Dolan added, however, that the Obamacare mandate which...

Fr. George W. Rutler (The Judge Report, December 1, 2013) writes:... Without Advent, the only thing to do is to “rush� Christmas, with celebrations without much purpose. That turns Christmas inside out and can even make it depressing. Superficial Christmas is “joy without a cause� as G.K. Chesterton said in 1911 in his epic poem, The Ballad of the White Horse. He also said a couple of years earlier: “There is no more dangerous or disgusting habit than that of celebrating Christmas before it comes. �Our Lord spoke of people who “loved the dark rather than the light� (John 3:19),...

Vatican City, December 02, 2013 (Zenit.org) Staff | 142 hits Pope Francis met this morning with Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, increasing hopes for a future visit by the Pontiff to the Holy Land. The two leaders discussed the “complex political and social situation in the Middle East.� A Vatican press release stated that both the Holy Father and the Prime Minister expressed their hope that a lasting peaceful solution between Israel and Palestine.Various questions were considered regarding the "relations between the State Authorities and the local Catholic communities, as well as between the State of Israel and the...

Mid-East Prophecy Update - December 1st, 2013 Pastor JD talks about the prophetic significance of the upcoming Blood Moons occurring during Jewish Feast Days, in 2014 and 2015.

Katie Scrivener worried that her infant son, Fulton, would cry when he encountered a very important man in Rome. She was the one who wound up weeping, albeit tears of joy. One of the enduring images that came out of the weekly general audience Pope Francis gave in St. Peter’s Square Nov. 20 has the pontiff trading gazes with Fulton Scrivener, who will celebrate his first birthday Dec. 19. In a photo that ran the next day on Page 1 of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, the Holy Father shows unabashed joy as he places his right hand on the...

The Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople has denied rumors that Patriarch Bartholomew I of Constantinople, who holds a primacy of honor in Eastern Orthodoxy, is a Freemason. “The Ecumenical Patriarchate hereby assertively denounces that His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew has any relation whatsoever with Freemasonry,” the Patriarchate said in a brief statement. Announcement by the Holy and Sacred Synod (Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople)

Whenever there's an archaeological discovery related to the Bible, conflicting interpretations by various experts can leave a believer's head spinning. Take the discovery in Israel of a palace from the era of King David earlier this year. An archaeologist from Hebrew University in Jerusalem said there's "unequivocal evidence" that David and his descendants ruled at the site. But critics, including some committed believers, say it could have belonged to other kingdoms and that David's palace likely would have been in Jerusalem some 18 miles northwest. Still others claim there is no archaeological evidence that David even existed. Similar confusion ensued...

WASHINGTON (RNS) Facing a $26 million earthquake repair bill and years of financial woes, the iconic Washington National Cathedral will start charging visitors in 2014, an abrupt change that cathedral officials had long resisted. Adults will be charged $10, and seniors, students, children, veterans and members of the military will be charged $6, according to cathedral officials. Regular worship services and Sundays will remain free of charge; the ticket plan is scheduled for a six-month trial run starting in January. “We are called to preserve and restore a building that is more than a century old and to offer programs...

Exclusive: Greg Laurie sees U.S. going way of Israel, punished by God with takeover. I think that our culture in the United States seems to be turned upside down. It seems that, in the perception of many, what was once considered good is now perceived as bad. What was once perceived as bad is now thought of as good. We even see this reflected in our use of words. A long time ago, people used expressions like “holy smoke” or “hunky dory.” My generation said things like “Far out, man!” and “Whoa, that is really heavy!” And one word that...

On November 11, 2013, Religion News Service reprinted an Associated Press story by Gillian Flaccus on the development of “atheist mega-churches”. These have the rather revealing name “Sunday Assemblies” (perhaps an allusion to the Pentecostal Assemblies of God—in the hope of emulating the success of the latter?). The story described a recent gathering of this type in Los Angeles: “It looked like a typical Sunday morning at any mega-church. Several hundred people, including families with small children, packed in for more than an hour of rousing music, an inspirational talk and some quiet reflection. The only thing missing was God.”...

From the "180" Movie website,  an amazing story demonstrating the power films have to educate and change minds.  If we want to change laws so that all innocent human life is protected, we need to first create a Culture of Life in our society.  "180" is doing just that!  Read the "Pro-life Plant" below and then view the shocking, life altering video "180." Pro-life Plant Ray Comfort I was doing a radio interview recently with a host who said that he loved “180.” This was because the 33-minute movie was able to do what he had been trying to do...

This is a first in a series of three messages. In this, No. 1, I’ll seek to analyze a problem that has arisen in many sections of the church and in many parts of the world. In the next message I’ll seek to analyze how the problem arose. And in the third message I’ll consider ways to guard against that problem arising again. The title of this first message is Let Us Honor God’s Holy Spirit. There has been in recent years a worldwide explosion of signs and wonders. Some have been biblical and helpful. Others have been bizarre and...

“It’s a Catholic priest speaking at a Catholic school. It’s touchy,” said Tym Moss of the Bronx LGBTQ Center. Linger over that. A Catholic priest speaking at a Catholic school is touchy? You’d think that priests speak at Catholic schools every day and it would be completely unremarkable. But you don’t live in gay world. Well, actually you do. You just don’t know it yet. The prestigious Cardinal Spellman High School in the Bronx, created precisely to teach inner-city kids whose parents fight to keep them out of the disastrous New York Public School system, is under fire for inviting...

[title cont.: ...Renounces Free Market Economics as “Crude and Naive”] Since his coronation, Pope Francis has made waves throughout the Catholic community, often shunning generally accepted Papal tradition for a more modern and progressive world. He is, for lack of a better term, a reformer. From refusing the luxurious living quarters traditionally reserved for the head of the Church in the Vatican, to turning Catholic dogma on its head by suggesting it’s OK to be gay when he addressed the issue by asking, “Who am I to judge?” Francis is unlike any popes who have come before him. By some...

The U.K. Supreme Court has dismissed an appeal by Christian bed-and-breakfast owners that only allows married couples to share a double bed. Owners Peter and Hazelmary Bull had been successfully sued by gay couple Martyn Hall and Steven Preddy and were ordered to pay £3,600 (about $5,800) in damages. The Bulls say their policy—which was applied to heterosexuals as well as homosexuals—is based on their sincere Christian belief that marriage is the union of a man and a woman. Peter and Hazelmary Bull had appealed to the Supreme Court, asking for a “reasonable accommodation” of their religious beliefs. But five...

Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin are starting to sour on the new pope. In response to Pope Francis’ first Apostolic Exhortation, in which the pontiff denounced “trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world,” these two paragons of the far right – both of whom regularly invoke the teachings of Jesus to bolster their own political views – have suddenly turned their backs on the man whose actual job description is to speak for Jesus. Sarah Palin complained that Pope Francis sounded “kind...

Moscow, November 27, Interfax - There is a need for an open and broad public debate on the proposal to reflect in the Constitution the special role of Orthodox faith, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, the head of the Synodal Department for Church and Society Relations, said. "Such initiatives, like any public, ideological, and legislative initiatives, can and should be discussed freely. It is strange that people who expressed so much support for the draft religious Code proposed by Mr. Prokhorov, which in my opinion is debatable, literally begged the authors of this initiative to be silent," Father Vsevolod told Interfax-Religion. "Any...

This is what Thanksgiving is all about! Thank you, Abraham Lincoln.

Joseph Pearce writes ... I'm at EWTN at the moment and had a sneak preview of the forthcoming Hobbit special on which we worked. It's truly superb and you are as wonderful as ever! It's being aired on December 5th. Can't wait to see it! We filmed two specials - one on The Hobbit and one on The Lord of the Rings.  I have not yet heard when the second one will air.  I play Tolkien in both specials and Joseph offers his insightful commentary on the Catholic elements in Tolkien's works.  I'll pass long more info as it's passed...