Free Republic

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday slammed President Trump’s call to ban all transgender individuals from serving in the U.S. military and vowed to fight the president’s proposal. “69 years ago, President Truman desegregated the US Military. This morning, @POTUS turned anti-#trans prejudice into policy,” Pelosi wrote on Twitter. “.@realDonaldTrump’s decision to ban transgender Americans from the military is a vile attack on brave individuals defending our country.” Pelosi said it is “disgusting” to see members of the LGBT community “devalued for a hateful political agenda.”

The Vatican is under fire from pro-life organizations for not one but two appointments to its pro-life Academy who are noted abortion activists. Lifenews.com has already reported on Pope Francis’s decision to name Nigel Biggar, a philosopher who supports abortion, to the Pontifical Academy for Life. Biggar was one of 45 ordinary members appointed to the pro-life academy this month, according to a Vatican announcement. Also concerning is Kathleen Foley, MD, who headed the Open Society Institute’s Project on Death in America. The Pontifical Academy for Life promotes protections for human life at all stages and supports research on moral...

It is “the big mistake” that is likely to be made at all levels of the Church. Pope Francis reiterated today, May 19, 2017, in the homily at Casa Santa Marta: true doctrine unites, but if instead it becomes ideology, it divides.   The Pontiff – as reported by Vatican Radio - meditates on the First Reading of the Acts of the Apostles, in which the so-called Jerusalem Council , around the year 49, establishes that pagans converted to Christianity should not circumcise according to what the Mosaic Law requires. The Pope notes that even in the first Christian community there...

Catholics take note: his favorite religion isn’t yours. Reuters reported Tuesday that “Pope Francis hopes to mend ties with Muslims on his trip to Egypt on Friday but faces criticism from church conservatives for meeting Islamic religious leaders after a spate of deadly attacks against Christians.” He has to mend ties? After Palm Sunday jihad massacres at two churches in Egypt, shouldn’t it be Egyptian Muslims who are reaching out to him to mend ties? “A main reason for the trip,” Reuters explains, “is to try to strengthen relations with the 1,000-year-old Azhar center that were cut by the Muslim...

VATICAN CITY (RNS) Catholic activist Sister Simone Campbell has suggested that senior clergy at the Vatican are more preoccupied with power than confronting issues that affect the faithful, like clerical sexual abuse. The U.S. nun, leader of the “Nuns on the Bus” campaign that has toured America during recent election cycles, spoke frankly in an interview ahead of a conference being held at the Vatican on Wednesday (March 8) to celebrate women’s contributions to peace. “The institution and the structure is frightened of change,” Campbell told Religion News Service. “These men worry more about the form and the institution than...

The very liberal Catholic bishop of San Diego, Robert McElroy, who supports giving Communion to the divorced and remarried, contrary to Church teaching, and embracing “LGBT families,” said that social justice activists must become “disruptors” to counter the efforts of the federal government to apprehend illegal aliens. “Well now, we must all become disruptors,” said Bishop McElroy in a Feb. 18 speech at the U.S. Regional World Meeting of Popular Movements in Modesto, Calif. “We must disrupt those who would seek to send troops into our streets to deport the undocumented, to rip mothers and fathers from their families,” he...

The Democratic Party has problems. Ever since Democrats suffered major, unexpected losses in the November election, political commentators have been speculating about why. One of the biggest reasons pointed to is the party’s disconnect with rural, religious and pro-life voters. On Friday, MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough broached the topic with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. “How do they reconnect with a middle America who feels like [Democrats] look down on them?” Scarborough asked. Pelosi emphasized that Democrats are people of faith, but she said they may need to work harder to make that clear. Later in the interview, Pelosi accused Republicans,...

Skip to content non veni pacemThe Splendor of Truth “Thee, O God, we scoff” Posted on January 3, 2017  These screen shots are from Saturday at the Te Deum, and were retweeted all over the world. “Te Deum laudamus” is how the hymn begins, “Thee, O God, we praise.”  Pssst, you’re supposed to kneel on that kneely thingee and praise God. It’s not polite to stand there and stare.Silly Francis, he only kneels for muslims and wheelchairs. Not sure what +Marini is thinking, but I like how he keeps on setting up the prie dieu. Except when he sets it up...

The "climate of fear," in the Vatican was discussed on this blog back in December. OnePeterFive is reporting today more news, that the climate of fear is now descending to a climate of termination, retribution and revenge allegedly engineered by Pope Bergoglio himself. The same overstepping arrogance on the part of the Pope by creating a commission to investigate an internal administrative matter that is none of his business with the Knights of Malta has now apparently caused him to seek the heads of priests who may disagree with him. Maike Hickson writes that "Marco Tosatti, the well-informed and well-respected...

The latest media person to fail to think and count to ten before hitting the "Tweet" button is Matthew Dowd. Once a Democrat, Dowd came over to the Republican Party in 1999, and was George W. Bush's chief campaign strategist during the 2004 campaign. He became an independent in 2008 and is currently a Chief Political Analyst at ABC News. He also claims to be Catholic, but clearly has a politically twisted understanding of the first Christmas.

And we know that we are of God, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath given us an understanding, that we may know him that is true, and we are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life. Little children, keep yourselves from idols. Amen (I John 5:19-21)Certain men, rejecting the truth, are introducing among us false stories and vain genealogies, which serve rather to controversies, as the apostle said,25 than to God’s work of building up...

ROME — Pope Frances urged religious leaders on Wednesday to tell their followers that any killing carried out in the name of God is "satanic." The pontiff made the remarks during a Mass honoring Jacques Hamel, an 85-year-old priest murdered by ISIS-supporting teenagers who stormed his church in northern France in July. "Killing in the name of God is satanic," the pope told the ceremony in the Vatican's Domus Santa Marthae chapel. "I would like it if all religions said this, 'To kill in the name of God is satanic.'" Fr. Jacques Hamel celebrates Mass in June. Adel Kermiche and...

On Friday LifeSiteNews published leaked documents showing for the first time the Pope’s own opinion on the matter of Holy Communion for divorced and remarried Catholics who do not qualify for annulment. The letter set off an explosion of comments since many held that the Pope did not agree with the thesis of Cardinal Walter Kasper which was that in certain cases Holy Communion could be administered for such couples. Many comments suggested that the letter could not be authentic. Now, however, Vatican Radio has itself reported the letter as authentic, including specifically in its most controversial aspects – that...

Democratic vice-presidential nominee Tim Kaine, a practicing Catholic, on Saturday described his evolution on same-sex marriage and predicted that his church would change its views as well. “My full, complete, unconditional support for marriage equality is at odds with the current doctrine of the church that I still attend,” Kaine said at a dinner celebrating gay rights. “But I think that’s going to change, too.” Kaine, a senator from Virginia, spoke to a crowd of about 3,700 attending the 20th Annual Human Rights Campaign National Dinner in Washington, at which he also touted reasons why his running mate, presidential nominee...

Before answering the title question, let's look at a few facts drawn, for the most part, from an episode on Saul Alinsky and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) produced by Church Militant T.V. Find it here: http://www.churchmilitant.com/video/episode/ciax-2010-03-07. The broadcast dates back to 2010, but Catholics, Protestants, and religious skeptics alike should watch it because the fruits of the Alinsky-USCCB partnership have ripened. In 1938 when atheist Saul Alinsky was working with juvenile delinquents in Chicago, he struck up a friendship with two Catholic brothers, Joseph and Msgr. Peter Meegan who together acquainted Mr. Alinsky with the inner...

The incredible show on St Peter's Basilica: a Neo-Pagan obscenity for the Feast of the Immaculate! The sense that St. Peter's Basilica has been profaned is strong. The symbolic significance of the event is a Church immersed in darkness, but illuminated by the world, by the new climatist-religion-ideology (all financed by the World Bank Group which will now have to explain to us what politics compatible with the teaching of the Church it is promoting..) The holy place par excellence, the heart of Christianity transformed on a maxi-screen for the show of the New World Power Ideology ...and the Nativity...

We will avoid editorializing on whether the Church has "never been against birth control" as this type of statement is simply a symptom of the horrific state of modern religious formation. Prelates and priests preach incorrect ideas, sadly, on a daily basis. They are not infallible -- even on issues of faith and morals. The primary issue is, once again, that Pope Francis led the way to this thinking, both in the insensitive and simple-minded way he lambasted large Catholic families (see here) and in his fixation on climate change (see here). Cue Peter Cardinal Turkson, President of the Pontifical...

There is a great deal of confusion over the issue of papal infallibility, which prevents the pope from erring when defining doctrines for the universal Church. Many erroneously believe that the charism would prevent a person raised to the Pontificate from erring when speaking on matters of faith and morals. In reality, the charism of infallibility only prevents the pope from erring in limited circumstances.

Cardinal Burke tells Mass of Ages quarterly that Catholics should be 'very concerned' Cardinal Raymond Burke has said that if the family synod opened the way for divorced and remarried Catholics to receive Holy Communion then it has "departed from Catholic teaching in a very fundamental matter". The cardinal, patron of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, made the comments in an interview with Mass of Ages, the quarterly magazine of the Latin Mass Society.

On the plane returning from his journey to Africa today Pope Francis made his clearest remarks in condemnation of ‘fundamentalist’ Catholics. "Fundamentalism is a sickness that is in all religions," Francis said, as reported by the National Catholic Reporter’s Vatican correspondent, Joshua McElwee, and similarly by other journalists on the plane. "We Catholics have some -- and not some, many -- who believe in the absolute truth and go ahead dirtying the other with calumny, with disinformation, and doing evil." "They do evil," said the pope. "I say this because it is my church." "We have to combat it," he...