Free Republic

A pro-abortion Catholic congressman from Pennsylvania has come to the defense of Rep. Patrick Kennedy in his dispute with Bishop Thomas Tobin of Providence. “We don't legislate at the orders of the Vatican, we legislate what is in our conscience and what we think is good for our country,” said Rep. Patrick Murphy as he received an award at Harvard University from Caroline Kennedy, who is Rep. Kennedy’s cousin. “I'm reaching out to Patrick Kennedy and also to my local priests and bishops to make sure they know that we agree on 99 percent of the issues.” More harsh were...

A few weeks ago, on a Thursday around noon, Nancy Pelosi whirls through the second floor of the Capitol in a sea-foam pantsuit with lots of gold jangling on her arms. The Speaker of the House, the highest-ranking woman in government and third in line to the president, is about to walk the pink-painted halls of her private chambers to another series of closed-door meetings with the Democratic caucus about the health-care bill. Today, she’s set up a powwow of progressives in one of her conference rooms, and another for the Blue Dogs down the hall, but first she has...

Health care is in the news — but you have to wonder where all the Christians are. This is one of the biggest issues facing our country and our people, yet no one seems to be bringing a Christian voice or tone to that debate. Have you noticed? During the presidential campaign, there was much talk about the 50 million or so who have no health care insurance, many of whom who forgo care altogether and then wind up in emergency rooms with more serious, more fully developed illnesses than would have been the case had they sought preventive care....

The 40-year-old "comedian" Jack Black went on the "dark side" during the MTV Awards praying to the devil. Black, who was promoting a heavy metal video game called Brütal Legend, asked the "Dear Dark Lord Satan" to bless the rock star nominees with "continued success in the music industry." "I was mortified when Jack Black lead everyone in a prayer to satan. It was no joke," said Samantha Taylor of California. "The audience held hands and did it. I was a fan, but not anymore." Black made his grand entrace wearing extra muscles and a battle axe. "During the Awards,...

Agnostic attorney Clarence Darrow once said, "I don‘t believe in God, because I don’t believe in Mother Goose." Now those controversial words and others are being used in part of a new push to promote the thinking of atheists and agnostics. Dozens of new ads will target the people of San Francisco. The campaign is the brainchild of the Midwest-based Freedom from Religion Foundation, which represents some 14,000 nonbelievers across the country. The association has been working since 1978 to keep church and state separate. The ads are already popping up on city buses. The group ordered 75 exterior signs...

Here is video of Bernard Whitman and Tucker Carlson talking with Martha MacCallum about health care. Bernard Whitman said "the fact that in this day health care is not considered a basic and fundamental human right in this country is an absolute disgrace," and asked "what would Jesus do?" After Whitman says this you can hear Tucker Carlson chuckling in the background. Tucker Carlson asked "if health care is a right, where does it come from?" It's definitely not in the Constitution. (Watch Video)

“For what my grandpa called the cause of his life, as he said that every American have decent quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege, we pray to the Lord.”

Barack Obama has apparently now been advised to shift the ground in the debate over health care reform, to get it away from discussions about specific provisions in the pending legislation (whether it will force us to unplug grandma or use our tax dollars to pay for others' abortions) and get it onto a far loftier moral high ground. This he did last weekend in a conference call to liberal clergy, urging them to endorse universal health care because of what he has decided is all part of the biblical injunction to "be our brother's keeper." Ostensibly, many moral theories...

The mix of politics and religion can be an intoxicating cocktail. Just now, you can smell the incense everywhere, from Martha's Vineyard to Washington. For a left that obsesses over a wall of separation between church and state, when death comes and health care bills need rallies, there is little hesitation to break out the devotional smells and bells. But the loss of Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, one of the most prominent Catholic politicians in the United States, a leading proponent of health care reform and major supporter of the president's agenda, should not obscure a pivotal fact: Barack Obama...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5HJszTnuQw Sister Campbell: "We've got 47 million people that don't have access to health care." BOR: "No they do, they walk into any emergency room in the country, they have access to health care FREE." Sister Campbell: "Oh but then, please, please, then consider what that then does to those of us that have insurance, how it escalates OUR costs!"

President Barack Obama needs some outside help pushing health care reform, and he's turning to rabbis to get it. In a morning conference call with about 1000 rabbis from across the nation, Obama asked for aid: "I am going to need your help in accomplishing necessary reform," the President told the group, according to Rabbi Jack Moline, who tweeted his way through the phoner. "We are God's partners in matters of life and death," Obama went on to say, according to Moline's real-time stream. The 15-minute morning briefing was sponsored by the Religion Action Center of Reform Judaism, and included...

‘Meet John Doe’ and the Old Fakearoo Posted By Michael McGruther On June 30, 2009 @ 11:10 am In Classic Hollywood | No Comments Dear Reader, Do you have a little time to sit back and examine a classic movie that will absolutely shock you when seen through the prism of now? This is not my typical short article or essay. This is my own argument that what occurs in the 1941 picture “Meet John Doe” is exactly what has come to pass in America today with the Democratic Congress and their Presidential puppet. All the players and plays...

To some people, Barack Obama is just a hard guy to figure out. He won’t fit easily in the usual mental pigeon holes, and that gets frustrating. Just this week, Rush Limbaugh referred to the president as “a half-black, half-white human being with no experience running anything of substance.” I have no idea what made that “half-black, half-white” thing relevent. But apparently it’s an important observation, at least in Rush’s World. Then there’s the matter of Obama’s religion. Over at Politico, they noted that “Barack Obama invokes Jesus more than George W. Bush.” “In his speech Thursday in Cairo, Obama...

I spend a lot of time arguing about the fact Obama may be a Muslim, I always get this response, So what? Whats a good come back?

Boston Vigil for Dr. Tiller Join the Boston community in sharing our grief and celebrating the life of Dr. George Tiller, a true hero for women across the country. Monday, June 1st 6pm St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral 138 Tremont St., Boston Across from the Park St. T stop Please help us spread the word via email, Facebook, Twitter, and texts. Facebook event: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=88629078374&ref=nf Twitter hashtag: #BostonVigil and #Tiller (this one is attracting some unpleasant tweets, however) Dr. Tiller was shot and killed Sunday morning while serving as an usher at his church in Witchita, Kansas. Since the 1970s, Dr. Tiller...

The next same-sex marriage battle in California will be fought over a referendum aimed at the November 2010 ballot that is likely to include door-to-door campaigning in Bible-belt areas of the state that backed Proposition 8. The battlegrounds will not be in San Francisco or West Hollywood but in places like Fresno, the geographic center of California where proponents of same-sex marriage will hold their first high-profile event Saturday. Starting with a 14.5-mile march in Selma - the Fresno County town with the same name as the Alabama city iconic to the 1960s civil rights movement - and ending with...

May 20, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - President Barack Obama's speech at Notre Dame Sunday held out as a central thesis a false theology of faith; a false theology contradicted by the Bible, by ancient Christian writers and by the Catechism of the Catholic Church.A central point in the President's speech was "faith" and its supposed inherent "doubt."  Obama told the students: "Remember, too, that the ultimate irony of faith is that it necessarily admits doubt. It's the belief in things not seen.  It's beyond our capacity as human beings to know with certainty what God has planned for us or what...

A new polling analysis from Gallup finds that the Republican Party has lost support among nearly every major demographic subgroup, from college graduates to married people to those making under $30,000 a year. In 2001, 47 percent of college grads leaned Republican. Today, just 37 percent do. Support among married people has slid from 51 percent to 46 percent. Just 28 percent of those making less than $30,000 lean Republican, down 9 points in the past eight years.

Washington (CNSNews.com) – Union leaders, clergy and liberal members of Congress gathered in the mostly empty U.S. Capitol Visitors Center early Tuesday morning to hear multicultural choir music, speeches from religious leaders--and to pray for the passage of the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). The event was a prayer breakfast sponsored by Faith Leaders for Workplace Fairness--a coalition of liberal religious groups that was formed for the sole purpose of promoting EFCA, commonly known as the “card-check” bill. Under this bill, union organizers could compel an employer to recognize a union as representing the employer's workers any time more than...

In the opening sentence of the last chapter of his new book, “Reason, Faith and Revolution,” the British critic Terry Eagleton asks, “Why are the most unlikely people, including myself, suddenly talking about God?” His answer, elaborated in prose that is alternately witty, scabrous and angry, is that the other candidates for guidance — science, reason, liberalism, capitalism — just don’t deliver what is ultimately needed. “What other symbolic form,” he queries, “has managed to forge such direct links between the most universal and absolute of truths and the everyday practices of countless millions of men and women?” Eagleton acknowledges...

President Barack Obama Washington D.C., May 14, 2009 / 05:12 am (CNA).- The White House has responded to opposition to President Obama’s appearance at the University of Notre Dame, claiming that only "one group" is organizing a boycott and pointing to other groups who support the president’s commencement speech and reception of an honorary degree."I think there's one group organizing a boycott and, as best I can understand it, there are 23 groups that have formed in support of the president's invitation," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said, according to ABC.The "one group," ND Response, is a coalition...

A new poll released last week indicates members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints generally approve of President Barack Obama’s performance, but much less so than members of other religious groups. The poll, conducted by Gallup, pegs the president’s approval among Latter-day Saints at 45 percent, with 40 percent disapproving. This level of support is significantly lower than Obama receives from the poll’s other religious groups. Muslims offer Obama his highest approval ratings, with 85 percent of respondents indicating support for his job performance. Similarly, Jews and Catholics also generally approve of the president, polling at 79...

During the 2008 presidential campaign, there was a steady drumbeat of opposition to Barack Obama from some U.S. Catholic bishops, which only increased after his election. But despite the attention these attacks received in the media and on Internet blogs, polls show that the Catholic people are not listening. He has been criticized: • for being the most pro-abortion president ever, even though he wants to develop programs that will reduce the number of abortions while keeping it legal under most circumstances (he supports restrictions in the third trimester with an exception for the health of the mother); (snip) These...

<p>Organizers of this week's National Day of Prayer still don't know whether the White House will participate.</p> <p>The event's evangelical character earned it a White House welcome during President George W. Bush's eight years in office. But Brian Toon, vice chairman of the National Day of Prayer Task Force, says to date, there's been no mention of a White House observance being held this year.</p>

On his 100th day in office, President Obama will be "crowned" in messianic imagery at New York City's Union Square. Artist Michael D'Antuono's painting "The Truth" – featuring Obama with his arms outstretched and wearing a crown of thorns upon his head – will be unveiled on April 29 at the Square's South Plaza. According to a statement released about the portrait, "The 30" x 54" acrylic painting on canvas depicts President Obama appearing much like Jesus Christ on the Cross: atop his head, a crown of thorns; behind him, the dark veil being lifted (or lowered) on the Presidential...

President Obama’s first 100 days in office will come to a close. Obama's juggernaut candidacy swept many Christians into its wake. Some now appear to have "buyer's remorse." As David Gushee, an evangelical Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University and a supporter of Obama recently wrote in the USA TODAY: "Mr. President, we need more than lip service. Centrist evangelicals like me embraced Barack Obama's campaign pledge to help bride the gaps of the culture wars. Instead, the president's short record on abortion-related issues is is familiar— and disappointing—rather than revolutionary.” Gushee is not alone. So, while politicos and...

Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears have taken to Twitter to support gay marriage, just days after Miss California Carrie Prejean sparked controversy during Sunday night's Miss USA competition when asked by celeb blogger Perez Hilton if more states should legalize same-sex marriage. Prejean stated her opinion that marriage should be between a man and a woman — and in the process has made an enemy of Hilton — but has also started a conversation among many notable celebrities on Twitter. "Love is love!" Britney Tweeted to Perez. "People should be able to do whatever makes them happy!" Miley Cyrus Tweeted...

Frank Rich, mutant columnist for The New York Times, has a permanent sneer on his face — especially for proponents of traditional marriage. In a recent column, “The Bigots’ Last Hurrah,” he mocks the supposedly sad, pathetic creatures who have the audacity to stand for Judeo-Christian morality, notwithstanding media censure. His hook is a YouTube video called “Gathering Storm,” produced by the National Organization for Marriage, which Rich treats as the pro-family equivalent of “Triumph of the Will.” Just who is Rich calling a “bigot”? For starters a majority of voters in Oregon (57%), California (53%), Texas (76%) Florida (62%),...

Amidst all of the American flags and presidential seals, there was something missing when President Barack Obama gave an economic speech at Georgetown University this week -- Jesus. The White House asked Georgetown to cover a monogram symbolizing Jesus' name in Gaston Hall, which Obama used for his speech, according to CNSNews.com. The gold "IHS" monogram inscribed on a pediment in the hall was covered over by a piece of black-painted plywood, and remained covered over the next day, CNSNews.com reported. The Washington Times' Belief Blog asked the university about the presidential request: Julie Bataille from the university's press office...

South Bend, Ind., Apr 14, 2009 / 06:36 pm (CNA).- Fr. John Jenkins, the President of the University of Notre Dame, has written a letter to the school's board of trustees, defending the university’s invitation of President Obama to the school’s May commencement ceremony. Fr. Jenkins argues in his letter that while many have criticized the school’s move, canon lawyers and the USCCB document, “Catholics in Political Life,” both support his action. In the letter, posted in full on LifeSiteNews, Fr. Jenkins recalls the June 2004 USCCB statement on Catholics in political life and cites “two key sentences” that “have...

The international Religious Left has very little interest in human rights or religious liberty in the world, outside territories occupied by or supposedly victimized by Israel. Never critical of radical Islam or Arab regimes, groups like the World Council of Churches (WCC) have an obsessive interest in the plight of Palestinians, whose plight would otherwise bore the WCC, if Israel, and by extension, the U.S., could not be blamed. Last month, the WCC dispatched a "Living Letters" team to Israel and "Palestine," purportedly to show solidarity with Palestinian Christians. But the attitude of Hamas and other Islamists towards the dwindling...

When it comes to church, President Obama can't avoid trouble. As the First Family attended an Easter Sunday service at St. John's Church across from the White House Sunday, the Rev. Luis Leon unleashed a vicious and unholy attack on New York. He insulted the Yankees. With the Obamas sitting in the sixth row, Leon told congregants that "baseball season has started" and that the church's drummer is a huge Yankees fan. Leon then said he wanted to remind everybody that the Orioles have beaten the Yankees twice so far, and therefore, "The world lives in hope." "I'm a fairly...

Meghan McCain: We Need More Gay Republicans! By David Knowles Apr 13th 2009 10:00AM Here's a question: Can Meghan McCain, the blog-a-lot daughter of Senator John McCain, help bring the Republican Party into the twenty-first century? Well, with her column at The Daily Beast, and during her many television interviews, she sure is giving it a go. Today's screed, for instance, attempts to light a fire under the Republican posterior on the matter of including gay rights in the party platform: If the Republican Party has any hope of gaining substantial support from a wider, younger base, we need to...

Why am I a Catholic? There are a thousand ways to answer that question, and this book will take up many of them. By its end, there will be one answer. -SNIP- ...and in America (continuing racism), with the recognition that hatred of the Other (whether Jews, blacks, or, say, Muslims) is still virulent. Women came to a new self-understanding, from the workforce jolt of World War II to the claustrophobia of the suburbs in the 1950s to the liberation of the 1960s (the birth control pill) and 1970s (Roe v. Wade). Sexual sensibility itself was upended, with gay rights,...

“One of the great strengths of the United States is ... we have a very large Christian population — we do not consider ourselves a Christian nation or a Jewish nation or a Muslim nation. We consider ourselves a nation of citizens who are bound by ideals and a set of values.” — Barack Obama at a press conference in Turkey, April 6, 2009. We are a nation adrift. As part of the left’s relentless campaign to remove all mention of our nation’s founding Judeo-Christian principles from public life, we are now, as Obama states correctly, a nation devoid of...

With Easter four days away, the Great Church Search is on for the Obamas, who are seeking a presidential place of worship in Washington nearly a year after a divisive break from their Chicago church and the incendiary sermons of its controversial pastor. White House aides and close friends of the family have been quietly checking out D.C. churches on a shortlist - maybe a dozen in all - and attending services, speaking with pastors, reverends and rectors and reporting back to the Obamas, said one White House source familiar with the search.

The Washington Post ran a column a few days ago, in which a Mr. Joel Berg applauds the Obama Administration for reducing the amount of charitable deduction that The Rich are allowed to take when they write a check to charity. Mr. Berg – who runs a charitable foundation that feeds the poor — explains things for us thusly:   “…It is wrong to give them [the very rich] unilateral power to decide whether their taxpayer-subsidized donations should go to, say, well-heeled operas or lavish care of pets rather than to organizations that meet more pressing communal needs.” Mr. Berg lists two...

Gordon Brown has made an overtly religious call for a new world order based on the 'deep moral sense' shared by all faiths. Making the first speech by a serving Prime Minister at St Paul's Cathedral in London, he quoted scripture as he urged people to unite to forge a new 'global society'. The Prime Minister argued that through all faiths, traditions and heritages runs a 'single powerful modern sense demanding responsibility from all and fairness to all'. He quoted the Christian doctrine of 'do to others what you would have them do unto you' and highlighted similar principles in...

Wright's role among topics of 'Phenomenon' It was at the end of May last year, about one week before Barack Obama had sealed the Democratic Party's presidential nomination, that Daphene McFerren sent a letter to Rev. Jeremiah Wright. McFerren, the director of the University of Memphis' Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change, was already planning a conference for April of 2009 that would examine the impact of Obama's historic candidacy. She explained her ambitions to Wright and invited him to come and speak. Less than a week later, Wright accepted, agreeing to the speaking fee of $4,000 that McFerren...

President Obama, who has made massive strides to expand abortion rights in his first few weeks in office, is looking forward to a "dialogue" with Catholics, who by church law are pro-life, when he speaks at the school's commencement this spring. The confirmation came at a news briefing today from presidential press secretary Robert Gibbs to Les Kinsolving, WND's correspondent at the White House. "What is the president's reaction to the 50,000 people already who've signed petitions joining the Catholic bishop of Fort Wayne, South Bend in objecting to his addressing the graduation and receiving an honorary degree from Notre...

Back in 2007, the New York Times famously proclaimed that the evangelical movement in America was cracking up. Since then, the media has relished exposing what they see as fault lines in evangelicalism over such issues as abortion, marriage, and the environment. The pundits seized upon President Obama’s decisive electoral victory last fall to opine that evangelicals were no longer the political force they once were. And just last week, a well-known evangelical blogger predicted the “collapse” of evangelicalism in America within the next decade, even though he also predicted that out of the ruins of evangelicalism, “new forms of...

Debra Haffner delights in the reactions she gets when strangers ask her what she does for a living. "I'm a minister and a sexologist," she says. They blink their eyes and try to reconcile what seems to them to be two opposing forces. Religion in the U.S., after all, seems to have quite a reputation for trying to stifle the joy of sex. So how could she joyfully live in these two worlds of church and sexuality? "Our sexuality and our spirituality are intimately connected," Haffner told a crowd at the First Unitarian Society in Madison earlier this month. At...

To millions of Americans fascinated by comic-book superheroes, Bill Jemas of Princeton is an industry legend who helped breathe life into Marvel Enterprises by pushing the wildly successful “Ultimate Spider-Man” series that rejuvenated the company. These days, however, Jemas, a high-energy 51-year-old whose controversial four years as Marvel’s president remain fodder for comic-book blogs, finds himself engrossed in a task far removed from dialogue balloons. Each morning before sunrise, for the last three years, the Rutgers and Harvard Law School graduate has labored over the Bible, specifically the Book of Genesis in Hebrew, the language in which it was first...

Will ending the culture wars be as difficult as repairing a broken economy? If President Obama's primary task is to restore economic growth, he has also been waging a quiet, long-term campaign to ease the nation's divisions around religious and moral questions. That venture, which has its roots in a 2006 speech that paid tribute to the political role of religious Americans, bore fruit in last year's election. Obama increased the Democratic share of the vote among Roman Catholics and younger evangelical Christians. Since assuming the presidency, he has pressed this effort through persistent calls to personal and family responsibility,...

Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- A group of evangelicals have joined with the Obama apologists at Catholics United to support radical pro-abortion health Secretary nominee Kathleen Sebelius. The group have signed a letter borrowing arguments from the fake Catholic group backing Sebelius despite her lengthy pro-abortion record.As LifeNews.com has reported, President Barack Obama tapped the Kansas governor to become his top health official.Sebelius has earned strong opposition from pro-life groups because she has vetoed nearly every pro-life bill sent to her from the legislature and has worked hand-in-hand with late-term abortion practitioner George Tiller.Catholics United, which deceived voters about Obama's...

New White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel isn’t only known for playing hardball (he’s been called a “profane, hyperactive attack dog”). The former Chicago politician and chairman of the House Democratic caucus, is also known for something far more enlightened: his religious commitment to Judaism. Beliefnet recently spoke with Rabbi Asher Lopatin of Chicago's Anshe Sholom B'nai Israel Congregation--a modern Orthodox synagogue where Emanuel and his family are members. Lopatin, who famously gave Emanuel permission to take a conference call on Rosh Hashanah (something prohibited by the laws of the holiday), offered insight into the “model congregant” and how...

Why is religion taboo in American schools? Christian attorney John Whitehead addresses that question. "God has become THE four-letter word in most public schools in the United States," says Whitehead, founder of The Rutherford Institute. And he explains in a commentary why that has come to pass: "An elite segment of society that views God as irrelevant has come to predominate." (View video commentary) Whitehead gained his legal insights into the phenomenon through the many cases of religious discrimination that have crossed his desk. "What's happened is [that] the elitists -- the people who run American society, from the public...

Pope to Pelosi: Catholics cannot back abortion U.S. House speaker — a pro-choice Catholic — met with pope in Italy VATICAN CITY - Pope Benedict, underscoring the Vatican's ruling on an issue that divides Americans, told U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday that Catholic politicians and legislators cannot back abortion rights. Pelosi, a powerful U.S. politician who is Catholic and pro-choice, has been accused by U.S. bishops in the past of misrepresenting Church teachings on abortion. "His Holiness took the opportunity to speak of the requirements of the natural and moral law and the Church's consistent teaching on the...

VATICAN CITY – Pope Benedict XVI on Wednesday told U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, a Catholic who supports abortion rights, that Catholic politicians have a duty to protect life "at all stages of its development."

If you watched the President at the National Prayer Breakfast this morning, you would have seen that he made a statement that was stunningly wrong (unless you are a Dhimmi or a PC cop): But no matter what we choose to believe, "There is no religion whose central tenet is hate. There is no God who condones taking the life of an innocent human being." HOGWASH. Has the President read the Qur'an since he converted to Christianity? Here are some of the "love your fellow man" type tenets taught by Islam: