Free Republic

First, do NOT read this article if you can’t handle the cold, hard truth. Go back to your Vampire Diaries. Second, Catholics love sex. If you don’t believe me, read a little European history. Oh, and look at your own family. (Nuff said? Okay.) Third, why on earth is sex such a big deal? It would be far easier for Catholics to just relax, already, and do what everyone else is doing – guilt free! Right? Wrong. Read on, if you dare… Not About Your Self-Esteem You can relax, because I am not going to deliver a lecture on your...

Editor's note: this piece was coauthored by Hagelin's daughter, Kristin Carey. If you could take any aspect from the family you grew up in and bring it into the family you have created, what would it be? A certain holiday tradition? The way your home was always filled with visitors? The friendship and affection your parents had for each other? Or maybe even the tough, but refining love they showed you?What would you obliterate, if you could? The alcoholism? The sting of abandonment? Strict rules and unfair punishment? Short tempers?Your answers to these questions may reveal more than you think. Even...

Michael Ingmire, uncle of Benghazi attack victim Sean Smith, spoke with Gretchen Carlson today following the hearing by the Select Committee on Benghazi. Ingmire wrote an editorial recently saying, “Americans should never be afraid to ask for justice.” On Wednesday, Ingmire said Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Leon Panetta are all liars. “They promised, for example, Pat Smith was promised by Panetta, Obama, Hillary Clinton that they were going to get back to her. That they were going to keep a consistent word as far as like, keeping her abreast of the investigation into the murders. And, they’ve never returned...

A husband's happiness is significantly related to how his wife feels about the union, according to researchers at Rutgers University and the University of Michigan, who say the happier the wife is with the marriage, the more content her husband will be with life in general. "I think it comes down to the fact that when a wife is satisfied with the marriage she tends to do a lot more for her husband, which has a positive effect on his life," noted Deborah Carr, a professor in the Department of Sociology, School of Arts and Science at RU. "Men tend...

The Tswana people of South Africa practice polygamy. (Photo/Wikipedia) Say “family issues” to most Americans or Europeans, and they’re likely to flash on divorce, or the challenges of single-parent households, or perhaps same-sex relationships and the push for gay marriage.What probably wouldn’t come naturally to mind is polygamy. Yet in many parts of the non-Western world, polygamy is a major feature of family life, and thus a major pastoral challenge for the Catholic Church.Discussion of polygamy is likely to surface at the Oct. 5-19 Synod of Bishops on the family in the Vatican, and could be a factor in the...

We are now just weeks aways from the commencement of the Synod on the Family. Due to the words of a Cardinal Kasper earlier this year during a speech in preparation for the synod, and the praise it received from the Pope, many have begun to suspect that the Synod on the Family will introduce novelties that will contradict the Church's (and Jesus') clear teaching on the indissolubility of marriage. Some even think that such an event could provoke a schism. I want to go on record that I do not expect that. Actually, what I expect is that the...

Let’s start with the end. When it’s over — when you make it through the marathon that is Ken Burns’s beautiful, seven-part documentary “The Roosevelts: An Intimate History,” which begins Sunday night on PBS — you may find yourself with a lingering, nebulous grief. You’re sorry it’s over. You’re sorry they’re over. You’re sorry a certain expression of American ideals is, or often appears to be, completely over. My study habits haven’t improved since college; like an idiot, I put off watching all 14 hours of “The Roosevelts” until I absolutely had to watch them on a deadline binge this...

An arrest warrant was issued Friday in Texas for Minnesota Vikings star running back Adrian Peterson after he was indicted on a child abuse charge for using a branch to spank his son. He won't play in Sunday's game against the New England Patriots. The Vikings said they had deactivated Peterson for Sunday's game Friday evening, just after his lawyer and the Montgomery County sheriff's office confirmed he was Read Adrian Peterson's lawyer Rusty Hardin's statement in full below: Adrian Peterson has been informed that he was indicted by a grand jury in Montgomery County, Texas for Injury to a...

Painting the Catholic Church as "out of touch" is like shooting fish in a barrel, what with the funny hats and gilded churches. And nothing makes it easier than the Church's stance against contraception. Many people, (including our editor) are wondering why the Catholic Church doesn't just ditch this requirement. They note that most Catholics ignore it, and that most everyone else finds it divisive, or "out-dated." C'mon! It's the 21st century, they say! Don't they SEE that it's STUPID, they scream. Here's the thing, though: the Catholic Church is the world's biggest and oldest organization. It has buried all...

Back in March, I wrote a piece for CatholicVote about FDA evaluation of a process that would create multi-parent embryos: Things like this always begin for such seemingly noble scientific reasons, don’t they? But they rarely stop there. And of course in addition to creating tri-parent offspring, which creates ethical and genealogical nightmares in its own right, virtually every instance of embryonic modification involves a slew of violations of the moral law, from in-vitro fertilization to the destruction of fertilized human embryos — human life — deemed imperfect or unnecessary to achieve the desired outcome. This morning, I read...

As my daughter, Kristin, and I recently browsed through my last book, 30 Ways in 30 Days to Save Your Family, we came across a chapter entitled, Vow To Be The Parent (Not Your Child’s Best Friend). I had to laugh to myself because Kristin—my third and youngest child—is now 22 and married, and I know my days of "active parenting" are more or less over. She is now first and foremost a friend. As long as there is breath in me I will be her mother - ready to provide counsel and advice as I am invited to share...

Hundreds of adoptive parents in New York City who've sent their children to live elsewhere continue to get monthly government subsidies of up to $1,700 per child. They can continue receiving the checks until the child turns 21 years old.They gave up on their “hard-to-place" adopted kids — but not on the government check intended for the discarded kids’ care. Hundreds of adoptive parents across the five boroughs who've sent their children to live elsewhere are continuing to pull in monthly checks of up to $1,700 per child while the city, state and feds look the other way, the Daily...

The children of America have gone back to school. And, in nearly every household, there is at least one person who is standing over the kitchen sink in tears, wondering where the years have gone. I understand. Every year at this time, I remember a wonderful essay I heard on NPR the summer before The Lad first went to college. A woman talked about the day she sent her daughter to kindergarten for her first day of school. "My husband told me not to cry," she wrote, "because tomorrow she would still be in kindergarten." "But, he was wrong," the...

My father, Max Prager, died last week. Here are some thoughts on the death of a parent. 1. Longevity Parents who live long are very lucky. Not only for their longevity, and not only because they get to see their children grow into adulthood, and not only because they may see grandchildren, but for all those extra years to reconcile with their children. Had my father died when I was a teenager, we would not have had the decades since then to get closer. 2. Age at death My father was born on July 18, 1918 and died on August...

Political junkies will remember how former Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels was being groomed to run for president in 2012 before he made his foolish statement that the next president should "call a truce on the so-called social issues." Americans do not want a leader who is unable or unwilling to articulate and lead on important social issues. Four years after the Daniels misstep, many have failed to learn that lesson. The New York Times has proclaimed the "libertarian moment" has arrived, by which they seem to mean libertarian ideas about marriage and the family. We hear people say the libertarian...

Actress Olivia Wilde is featured on the cover of the September issue of Glamour magazine. Inside the glossy is an article in which Wilde talks about what life is like for her “being a working mom.” An article featuring the vacuous ramblings of the newby mom (“I wasn’t going to sacrifice myself because I was becoming a mother,” she told her interviewer) would be unworthy of comment here were it not for the pictorial that accompanied the article. Or, more specifically, the photo of Wilde sitting in the booth of some Hollywood diner, glammed up in a Roberto Cavalli dress,...

Very few individuals who were not politicians or generals have had a major impact on American political history. Phyllis Schlafly is one of the exceptions. Twice. In 1964, she helped launch the grass-roots conservative movement that flourishes today, transformed by the internet, and in 1972 she inaugurated what came to be called “social conservatism.” More than any other individual, she was responsible for the nomination of Barry Goldwater, and thus, indirectly, Ronald Reagan. And virtually single-handedly, she defeated the so-called Equal Rights Amendment. Schlafly was born 90 years ago today in St. Louis, the daughter of John and Odile Stewart....

Man sends photo to ex-wife saying: ‘Consider your sons as birds in paradise’A Saudi father has confirmed his ex-wife’s accusations that he had smuggled his two little sons to join the war in Syria by sending her a picture of them with their weapons and telling her consider them as “birds in paradise”. The picture, published in Ajel and other Saudi newspapers, showed the bearded man hugging his two sons, aged 10 and 11 years, as they clutched their guns and holding up their finger, indicating they have joined the infamous militant Daesh group. The picture showed one the two...

Family must now exist, function in a country that is no longer a constitutional republic but a crony system of third world banana republic corruption with 100 million Americans unemployed or on the dole I was surprised by the statement made by former Florida governor Jeb Bush at the Faith and Freedom Coalition’s Road to Majority conference in 2013. “Immigrants create far more businesses than native-born Americans. Immigrants are more fertile, and they love families, and they have more intact families, and they bring a younger population. Immigrants create an engine of economic prosperity.” (Aaron Blake, Jeb Bush: U.S. Economy...

August has been a challenging month for my family the last few years. Two years ago, while my children, Maggie and Robert, and I were visiting my sister, Kathy, and her husband, Paul, in Key Biscayne, Florida, our mother ended up in the hospital in critical condition. While she recovered temporarily, she ultimately suffered a stroke right when school started in the fall of 2012. She spent the next year in a nursing home close to our home in Atlanta. Our whole family visited frequently -- Kathy, Paul, my husband, Jimmy, Maggie, Robert and even our two dogs, Midnight and...