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Most people have heard of Dogma but not many people know what it means. Dogma is another name for what the Church believes. The Catholic Church official teaching is based on The Apostles Creed and Dogma. Dogma is fundamental to the Catholic faith. It is etched on the heart of the Church for eternity because the Church believes it was revealed by God and the Church declared it infallibly. Note that the Vatican has no official list of Dogmas, probably for many reasons, one of which, that Dogmas can be very complicated, and placing them in a few words, could...

California Democrat Sen. and 2020 VP nominee on the “Harris-Biden” ticket Kamala Harris,, fresh from her epic character assassination attempt during the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, seems to have been designated the lead in trying to derail the Supreme Court nomination of 7th Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett. Harris’ partner in crime on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Maize Hirono of Hawaii, who plans to make her home visits by taxi after the Green New Deal kills airline travel, has said she will not meet with Barrett, lest her limited intellect be confused with the facts...

Normally, we’d scoff at a “pounce” narrative, but in this case it’s justified — across the aisle and the political/media spectrum, too. Thanks to Senate Democrats’ attacks on Amy Coney Barrett in her 2017 appellate confirmation hearing, their hostility to practicing Catholics on the bench practically invites another fight over faith in the upcoming hearings. Dave Weigel reports that both sides have to strategize over Catholicism, and that battle has a long, long history: By Saturday, the president will announce a female, Catholic nominee for the Supreme Court. The favorite is Amy Coney Barrett, who became a conservative star...

Proving Purgatory The doctrine of Purgatory, central to Christianity, is brutally attacked by certain non-Catholic polemicists. Their typical view of the Catholic doctrine of Purgatory is that it was either concocted by the Church in the Middle Ages for filthy lucreÂ’s sake, or that, if there are any ancient precedents for it among the Church Fathers, it gradually developed in scope and meaning so as to become something the early Church did not believe it to be. 1This was done, it is alleged, so that the Church could make money from the sale of indulgences, or to keep Catholics in...

[Catholic Caucus] Famous modern Jesuits totally disagree with Jesuit pope on importance of dogma October 17, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — As reported earlier at this site, Pope Francis in his weekly general audience of October 9 made the following remark: “Do I belong to the universal Church — with the good and the bad, all of us — or do I hold a selective ideology? Do I love God or dogmatic formulations?” Apart from the false opposition and sentimentality implicit in the second question, more reminiscent of the Woodstock “summer of love” than of Christian charity for God and neighbor...

LINCOLN, Neb. — Self-identified liberal voters are less forgiving to Democratic politicians who cross party lines on certain issues than conservative voters are to Republican lawmakers doing the same thing, a recent study shows. Researchers at the University of Nebraska used MRI technology to examine the brains of 58 people when they face incongruent positions by politicians. The researchers wanted to see which parts of the brain lit up when people evaluated fictional politicians’ stances on key conservative and liberal issues.

A Santa Barbara city councilman inadvertently let slip the primary purpose of progressivism in 21st century America. The city recently criminalized the use of plastic straws. Speaking to that issue, Councilman Jesse Dominguez said, “Unfortunately, common sense is just not common. We have to regulate every aspect of people’s lives.”

In the avalanche of reactions to Pope Francis’s audacious move to modify the Catechism so that it says the opposite of what the Church and every published catechism had ever taught before, there is one line of argument that has surfaced a great deal: “Pope Francis is not making a doctrinal statement about the illegitimacy always and everywhere of the death penalty but merely a prudential judgment about the inopportuneness of its use at this time in history.” In a recent article, Dr Alan Fimister correctly points out that even if this reading were plausible, the Pope has overstepped his...

Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) is settled science, proclaim the predictors of weather doomsday. Settled Science? Science evolves continuously and can never be settled, unless, of course, the ‘settled’ subject is dogma, not science. Is it just a ‘my way or the highway’ attempt by vested interests to close discussion on their terms? Consider the term “peer reviewed”. Science evolves through the contribution of new ideas which are published so that their peers (other scientists) can review, validate, contribute, or argue with them. If we had accepted Niels Bohr’s version of the atom as settled science, there would have been no...

National Catholic Distorter is reporting that the dissident theologian Hans Küng has publicly confirmed receipt of a letter from Pope Francis responding to his request “to give room to a free, unprejudiced and open-ended discussion on the problem of infallibility.” According to Küng, the pope gave him (and thus every other like-minded malcontent subversive in Catholic clothing) the green light to have at it. Given that Francis’ letter “set no restrictions,” according to Küng, “he has thus responded to my request to give room to a free discussion on the dogma of infallibility.” Notice the language that is used: Küng...

I started working last week at my old college in MD. Guess what came in the e-mail? Michelle is visiting us - tomorrow. What a way to start my job. Sorry so late but I've been SOOOO busy it's been hard to even read FR! Messages actually came out last week. If any local FReepers are interested....well, here you are.

In my opinion, only God can truly answer this question. Spouses are encouraged to spend extended time in the Word and obedience to it, as well as extended times of prayer and fasting, and seeking godly counsel. All destructive relationships and toxic counsel must be severed as you seek to answer this question. Many great bible teachers are divided on this issue. Some believe that remarriage to another is never allowed unless one of the spouses dies, but others suggest that it is permissible when adultery and abandonment occur. Much of the controversy centers on Matthew 5:32 where Jesus says,...

If you are puzzled, even disoriented by the Holy Father’s conduct of his pontificate (and I stress at the outset that what follows is not intended as an attack on it) you may be reassured by an article in this month’s National Geographic magazine, which contains some possibly indiscreet remarks by the Pope’s spokesman, Fr Federico Lombardi, which indicate that you are not alone. I say “possibly” indiscreet, since as he is the Pope’s director of communications, maybe what he says is something the Holy Father doesn’t mind us knowing. This is from an account of a conversation between the...

Due to circumstances beyond my control, I will keep this very brief, with the help of my column this month, at The Catholic Answer: For most of my life, the assumption of Mary existed as little more, for me, than a head-scratcher of a dogma.I understood that Elijah and Enoch had been assumed into heaven, so if I considered Mary’s assumption at all, it was simply to shrug it off: “Mary was assumed into heaven. Sure, why not?” The whys and wherefores of the matter were so far above my paygrade that they didn’t seem worth pondering.All of that...

If you try to shut down public debate, is this a way of ensuring that you win—or an admission that you have already lost? The question seems relevant today, because the most remarkable characteristic of our current national debate is that one side wants desperately to stamp it out whenever it occurs. Recently, for example, a gay New York businessman had the temerity to sponsor a “fireside chat” with Republican presidential candidate and arch-conservative Ted Cruz. He was, of course, required to repent the error, calling it “a terrible mistake” to actually talk to a politician who disagrees with him...

Featured Term selected at random:HISTORY OF DOGMA The systematic presentation of the history of divine revelation since it was completed at the end of the apostolic age to the present time. This history comprehends the Church's identification of what was revealed in Sacred Scripture and tradition; formulation of God's word in creeds, definitions, and doctrinal terms; interpretation of what was revealed; growth in understanding its meaning; and defense of revealed truth against the intrusion of heresy. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

Way back in the 1970's, I purchased an excellent book written by my hero and good friend Fulton J. Sheen entitled "The Electronic Christian" and published by the Macmillan Publishing Company. In this important book (indeed every book written By Sheen could be labelled as important), the saintly Archbishop who thoroughly intrigued his audience throughout the 1950's as "Uncle Fultie" - a Catholic counterpart if you will to Milton Berle's "Uncle Miltie," explains the importance and indeed the necessity of a religion with Dogma. Here is his essay: The modern man must decide for himself whether he is going to...

Say what you will about us millennials—we’re a wilting bouquet of narcissistic, socialistic, overeducated, underemployed, tatted-up hipsters who still live at home—but, from this day forward, don’t you dare say we’re climate change deniers. A strong majority (66 percent!) of young independent voters, ages 18 to 34, accept as dogma that man and his dirty deeds are causing, and will continue to cause, climate change—this according to a study conducted by a bipartisan pair of political strategy groups for the League of Conservation Voters.

Relaxed and at ease, Archbishop Gerhard Ludwig Müller returns a week after his appointment as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to the Diocese of Regensburg. A series of interviews for journalists are on the agenda for Friday: liberation theology, the SSPX and the situation of divorced and remarried. Minefields for an ecclesiastic, who has moved to third place in the Vatican's ecclesiastical pecking order. Archbishop Mueller, first of all, congratulations on the new job. Since when did you know about your appointment? I definitely knew it on 16 May, when the Holy Father has summoned...

You know the conversations.“Catholicism is so out-dated and inflexible!” “You don’t really need to follow the Vatican’s teaching to be loyal to the faith.” “Catholic to Catholic Church: It’s Reality-Check Time.”There are all manner of arguments people make to assert that the Catholic Church should evolve with the times to stay modern, to gain proselytes lest followers depart and the cranky old religion ceases to exist. “Change or perish!” they say.And they’ve been saying it for 2,000 plus years.It’s sensible to reply, “Well, Truth does not change.” It’s easy to then launch into an explanation about the objectivity and immutability...