Free Republic

How Envy is Different from Jealously and Is a Diabolical Sin Msgr. Charles Pope • April 18, 2016 • A short while back, we read from First Samuel at daily Mass and encountered an envious Saul. Upon David’s return from slaying Goliath, the women sing a song praising him. Saul should rejoice with all Israel but instead he is resentful and envies David: Saul was very angry and resentful of the song, for he thought, “They give David ten thousands, but only thousands to me. All that remains for him is the kingship.” And from that day on, Saul...

MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski made an explosive allegation about the first lady on Friday as a bitter dispute between the television host, her fiance Joe Scarborough and President Donald Trump raged on. MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski made an explosive allegation about the first lady on Friday Brzezinski put some oomph behind unsubstantiated rumors that Melania Trump wants out of her marriage during an interview with InStyle that appeared on the magazine's website. 'I know Melania. I haven’t talked to her in months, but if my gut is right, I don’t think she’s going to put up with it much longer,' Brzezinski said....

Cher has a bone to pick with First Lady Melania Trump. The legendary singer took to Twitter late on Thursday night to share some thoughts on the divisive first lady, and she did it in the most Cher way possible. "Not 2 [be] Mean but Melania Trump Always Looks SAD/Angry, Like She lost a Best Friend," she tweeted. "They NEVER Smile or Exchange Little Looks On TV. I Feel Bad." Not 2🐝Mean🙏🏻but Melania Trump Always Looks SAD/Angry,Like She lost a Best Friend.They NEVER Smile or Exchange Little Looks On TV.I Feel Bad — Cher (@cher) June 30, 2017

Jenny Slate, 35, is an American comedian, actor and author. The middle of three sisters, with a ceramicist mother and poet father, she was raised in Milton, Massachusetts. While at Columbia University, Slate performed standup and improv. Moving to Los Angeles with then-husband, director Dean Fleischer-Camp (they’ve since amicably divorced), Slate joined Saturday Night Live in 2009, but accidentally swore in her first episode and was fired after one season. A stop-motion short animation made with Fleischer-Camp, Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, became a viral hit, leading to New York Times bestseller children’s books and plans for a feature-length...

If you've felt your blood pressure rise after seeing passengers being served champagne on the tarmac while you're fighting for overhead space in coach, you are not alone. A new study finds that class division in the skies can have a real and occasionally dangerous effect on passengers in both sections of a plane. And when economy-class passengers are forced to pass through the luxurious first-class area on their way to the cramped economy seats, the rate of air rage incidents is more than seven times higher than if there were no first-class seats at all. Researchers report that the...

The GOP frontrunner appears to have mixed up income and revenue. On two occasions, this writer has spent weeks striving to demystify the Vatican’s finances. Now I’m attempting to solve the riddle of Donald Trump’s income and net worth. Pope Francis, who recently exchanged barbs with Trump over immigration, has bravely promised to open the Vatican’s books. Trump sounds less righteous in claiming that he won’t publicly release his tax returns while he’s being audited by the IRS, but does pledge to eventually make the highly anticipated filings public. Until then, voters can glean a great deal of information from...

Is Donald Trump suffering from a serious case of sleep deprivation? A New York Times columnist says Trump's behavior on the campaign trail may be caused by extreme lack of sleep. Timothy Eagan wrote: “Trump gets by on barely half the amount of sleep recommended for a healthy life....three or four hours, and sometimes just 90 minutes.” The Times says sleep deprivation makes people “cranky and temperamental,” “impulsive,” and “smaller things set them off.” The newspaper suggests that may account for his outbursts on the campaign trail where the GOP front runner said he wanted to punch a protester and...

Neither Trump nor Sanders started the nation's current class war-the biggest fight over class since the New Deal-but both candidates, as different as they are, have benefited. Class is back. Arguably, for the first time since the New Deal, class is the dominant political issue. Virtually every candidate has tried appealing to class concerns, particularly those in the stressed middle- and lower-income groups. But the clear beneficiaries have been Trump on the right and Sanders on the left. Class has risen to prominence as the prospects for middle- and working-class Americans have declined. Even amidst a recovery, most Americans remain...

One hesitates to give attention to Jesse A. Myerson. But it's probably worth it, if for no other reason to contend that many of his beliefs are likely shared by the mindless lemmings disguised as "journalists" who wildly cheered on Saturday when an obviously orchestrated "climate change" agreement designed ultimately to redistribute massive amounts of wealth from developed to underdeveloped countries — which would virtually guarantee that they will stay undeveloped — was announced in Paris. Almost two years ago, Myerson, whose experience includes "the Media and Labor Outreach committees at Occupy Wall Street," identified of "Five Economic Reforms Millennials...

The decor at Ben Carson’s home in Maryland shows that Donald Trump may not have the biggest ego among the Republican candidates. On display are awards, certificates, medals, and a painting of himself with Jesus

The most distressing aspect of soak-the-rich schemes is not that the left keeps pushing them-but that the right regularly fails to offers a convincing refutation. When Democrats declare that the rich are not paying their "fair share" of taxes, the Republicans' typical response is: Oh yes, they are; look at how much more they pay, in both absolute dollars and percentage of income, than those in lower brackets. Besides-Republicans usually add-refraining from imposing higher taxes on the rich helps "society as a whole," because of all the jobs produced through their investment capital. But this type of response does not...

Tom Tancredo thinks Donald Trump has taken his anti-immigrant rhetoric a bit too far. The real estate mogul and 2016 presidential hopeful “needs to be a little bit more artful,” Tancredo told the Denver Post. When asked whether he supports Trump’s stance on immigration, though, Tancredo responded, “God, yes.” . . “He should take lessons from me on how to talk to the press. For a small fee — no, actually for a very large fee — I will help him out. You’ve got to learn how to talk about it, which takes years of practice, which God knows I’ve...

Feminists on social media have started a campaign called "give your money to women," or "Giveyourmoneytowomen" on Twitter. The point of the campaign is that, according to its creators, men benefit from numerous privileges, including the patriarchy and earning more money than females. For that reason, men should literally give money to women for no other reason than that they are female. Here are just some of the tweets being bandied about on social media:

What Is the Deepest Root of Sin? It’s Not in Your Wallet and It’s Much Closer Than You Might Think By: Msgr. Charles PopeIn polling friends as to what they think is the deepest root of all sin, I got three main answers. One was a shrug indicating no answer at all (i.e., “I dunno”). Another was to refer to Scripture: For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evils (1 Tim 6:10). I’ll discuss below why this is an inadequate answer. The third main response was that original sin (and the concupiscence that followed) is the source of all of our other...

What Is Temptation, Why Does God Permit It, and What Are Its Sources? By: Msgr. Charles PopeI will be on the Catholic Answers radio show today (Monday, March 23) at 6:00 PM Eastern Time. The topic will be temptation: what it is and how to avoid and overcome it.  I’ve assembled some notes in preparation and I’ll present them (in two parts) in the blog. Today’s post focuses on what temptation is, why God allows it, and what its sources are. Tomorrow I’ll present the second half of the notes, which center on how to avoid and overcome temptation.What is Temptation? A seminary teacher of mine once defined...

The United States should absorb as many as 11 million immigrants each year into its economy, NPR “Planet Money” founder Adam Davidson writes in The New York Times Magazine. “Few of us are calling for the thing that basic economic analysis shows would benefit nearly all of us: radically open borders,” he writes.His proposal would double the current U.S. population in only 29 years to over 637 million people.

Envy, I’ve often thought, is the very worst human emotion. The epic Biblical narrative of Cain’s slaying of Abel reminds us that people have been jealous of others’ successes and well-being from time immemorial. When mixed, however, with the near-obsession with inequality that dominates much public discourse these days, there’s a serious risk that envy — and desires to appease it — can start driving public policy in ways that aren’t economically wise or politically healthy. Remarks like “you didn’t build that” or François Hollande’s notorious 2012 “I don’t like the rich” statement don’t of course come out of a...

> Good Times for Dogs, Not So Good for Babies – A Reflection on the Perversity of Modern Culture By: Msgr. Charles PopeIn moral decline, both personal and cultural, the problem is that not only do we desire what is evil, we also stop desiring that which is good and holy. At the heart of desiring what is evil (or what is good, but to excess), are pride, greed, lust, and gluttony. Sloth and envy are more involved in no longer desiring what is good.Sloth is a kind or sorrow or aversion to the good things God offers to us, involving everything...

We are seeing the most dangerous trend ever. There is an agenda behind the curtain and that is to sustain government at all costs and that includes everything you own. I have warned that either government will move toward a totalitarian state or to real democracy – real Athens style without the career politicians. The latter is possible with civil unrest as we saw in Ukraine. This agenda requires no secret group of sinister corporations, Rockefellers, Rothschilds, or Bildebergs. This is plain old Adam Smith where those in government will never admit they are wrong so the reason they are...

Bernanke used to make $200,000 a year during his eight years as Chairman of the Federal Reserve. He can make that in a single hour now on the international speaking circuit. He left office in February. By March, he was making up to three stops a week around the world. Bernanke is walking a well-worn path of former policy makers who leave power. Former presidents, former cabinet officials and former members of Congress have all turned their experience in public service into millions.