Free Republic

A new book by a priest who led the vanguard of dissent on birth control in Canada reveals for the first time his decades living as an active homosexual. Father Gregory Baum, a laicized priest married to a former nun for 30 years, admits in his forthcoming autobiography The Oil Has Not Run Dry that his wife did not mind the fact that he had a gay priest-lover on the side. "Shirley did not mind that, when we moved to Montreal in 1986, I met Normand, a former priest, with whom I fell in love," Baum writes in Chapter 32....

A few months ago, a man named Dave Rubin reached out to us at Word on Fire to ask if Bishop Barron would be open to an interview. (Apparently lots of Dave’s Twitter followers suggested the idea.) To be honest, we didn’t know much about Dave at the time. But after some Googling, we discovered he’s a well-known comedian and host of the super popular “Rubin Report”, a show that airs directly through YouTube. “The Rubin Report” has over 350,000 subscribers and 100 million views. It’s one of the most popular YouTube channels in the world. Dave mostly shares cultural...

The articulate and highly telegenic Bishop Robert Barron, made an auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles by Pope Francis, is representative of a new clerical style that has arisen within the unprecedented post-Vatican II division of the human element of the Church (not the Church per se) into traditionalist, "conservative" and liberal branches — a development roughly parallel to the division of Judaism into Orthodox, Conservative and Reform branches. Before Vatican II every orthodox Catholic priest was a “traditionalist” by today’s liberalized standard: he offered Mass the way the Church had always offered it — in Latin —...

Excerpts from interview with Dave Rubin: With Cardinal Dolan, Bishop Barron spoke about: If the only thing gay person hears from the Catholic Church is you’re “intrinsically disordered” we have a very serious problem on our hands. (In New York City alone – there are several gay-affirming parishes that regularly sponsor “Pride” masses, organized lectures and retreats given by Catholic “gay” men and women who openly dissent from Church teachings with regards to homosexuality. How then, could anyone possibly believe that there are “gay” people who only hear they are “intrinsically disordered” from the Church – actually, this is probably...

Well, well, well. Overnight more details emerged, confirming what I wrote yesterday. First, Edward Pentin, who is almost single-handedly “saving Catholicism from itself” with his reportage, as one very solid priest friend put it, has details of the secret meeting in which Antipope Bergoglio illegally coerced Grand Master Festing into “resigning”. Excerpted from RorateCaeli: The Pope summoned Fra’ Festing to the Vatican on Jan. 24 on the strict instruction not to let anyone know about the audience — a modus operandi that has been used frequently during this pontificate, the Register has learned. During the meeting, Francis asked Fra’ Festing...

Bishops in Malta have published a document on applying Amoris Laetitia, the apostolic exhortation on family released by Pope Francis last year. The bishops’ document reflects the pope’s call for more mercy and inclusion in the church, all of which is applicable to LGBT issues. In the document, “Criteria for the Application of Chapter VIII of Amoris Laetitia,” Maltese Bishops Charles Scicluna and Mario Grech primarily addressed the situation of Catholics who are divorced and civilly remarried. Yet the principles they laid out are transferable to LGBT Catholics and their loved ones, too. Released on the Feast of the Epiphany,...

In January, 2015, Fr. Gallagher caught a visiting priest from India showing homosexual pornography to a 14 year old boy. Fr. Gallagher rightly went straight to the police. However, in doing so, this good priest felt the wrath of the local Bishop, Gerald Barbarito. It seems the bishop was not at all happy that Fr. Gallagher had had this vile sodomite arrested. Apparently, the Diocese had preferred to spirit the sodomite out of the country, back to India. Barbarito responded to Fr Gallagher's righteous actions to go straight to the police by releasing his underlings - clerical and lay -in...

The Catholic Church has long been plagued by sickening scandals involving priests abusing children. And there is reportedly another scandal coming — this one of the pope's own making. Two people with direct ties to the Vatican tell me that Pope Francis, following the advice of his clubby group of allies in the curia, is pressing to undo the reforms that were instituted by his predecessors John Paul II and Benedict XVI in handling the cases of abuser priests. Francis is pushing ahead with this plan even though the curial officials and cardinals who favor it have already brought more...

This week the brave African delegations to the UN fought a rear-guard action to stop a new UN office that will seek out and punish any country or institution that does not bend to the will of the dominant LGBT ethos. This months-long fight began at the Human Rights Council in Geneva and it was almost stopped there. It could have been stopped there. It could have been stopped anywhere along the way as it moved from Geneva to the Third Committee of the General Assembly and finally this week to the General Assembly itself. All that was left to...

Two JetBlue passengers were kicked off a flight Thursday after one reportedly harassed Ivanka Trump. The daughter of President-elect Donald Trump was traveling with her three children when a male passenger "expressed displeasure" about having her on the plane, the Associated Press reports....

This column has more than once examined the sophistical method of popular neo-Catholic blogger Fr. Dwight Longenecker, who seems to specialize in advancing radically liberal positions under the guise of “conservative” Catholicism. Fr. Longenecker has now employed his method to neutralize the Vatican’s repeated instructions that homosexuals are not to be admitted to the seminary and, if detected, are not to be allowed to advance to ordination. In discussing the just-released document “The Gift of the Priestly Vocation” (Gift), Fr. Longenecker’s article begins by noting that Gift “re-affirmed the ban on the admission of homosexuals to seminary.” Indeed, the most...

When a Vatican office released a new document about the formation of new priests earlier this month, it reiterated a 2005 policy that has been interpreted as barring gay men from the priesthood, despite the not insignificant number of priests who identify as gay. But a priest in Chicago, who has advised two cardinals on theological issues and who has written extensively about the churchÂ’s teaching on homosexuality, published a column in the Vatican newspaper LÂ’Osservatore Romano on Dec. 18 in which he argues that the documentÂ’s nuance has been overlooked. The Rev. Louis J. Cameli, author of Catholic Teaching...

Update: just for the sake of people who've raised questions about the title we'd like to clarify. Without consulting the canon law, and not having any real accreditation in it, we understand that it's necessary for a suspended priest to submit himself for laicization of his own free will. We know of cases where clergy have refused to submit to it, but they are effectively inactive. In any case, he's been thrown out of his parish into the street and can't act as a priest. So, as far as we know, he hasn't been laicized yet, but regardless, whether he...

A Kentucky bishop is one of several clerics and religious scheduled to participate in a pro-LGBT symposium sponsored by New Ways Ministry, a dissident Catholic group censured by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). Bishop John Stowe of the diocese of Lexington is scheduled to participate in the group's eighth annual symposium, called "Justice and Mercy Shall Kiss: LGBT Catholics in the Age of Pope Francis," being held April 28–30, 2017 in Chicago. New Ways Ministry is notorious for demanding changes in Church teaching on the morality of same-sex relations, the normalization of so-called transgenderism and ordination of women...

Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ, On November 9, 2013, this reporter wrote an Open Letter to Pope Francis “On a Papal Commission of Inquiry into Homosexuality, Pederasty An open letter to Pope Francis - RenewAmerica www.renewamerica.com On a Papal Commission of Inquiry into Homosexuality, Pederasty and La Lobby Gay in The Catholic Church . A member of the pope’s Council of Eight brought the Open Letter to the attention of the pontiff, and a short time later the Vatican announced the creation of the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors (and vulnerable adults). At the end of my...

America, you were warned: Big holiday party cancelled, fashion industry in crisis mode after Trump victory the annual holiday party for the fashion industry hosted by publicist James La Force and his husband, writer Stephen Henderson, has been cancelled. . . . The L.A. Times reports that the couple had custom invitations printed in advance with the assumption that Hillary Clinton would be president and the national mood would be jolly. Alas, no one feels like partying, so the invitations were sent out with not only a cancellation notice inside, but a note saying that the party budget would be...

May I? Sorry, Thank you, Open Dialogue about relationships, marriage and family (2016) is simplistic, misleading, and in direct opposition to Church teaching in numerous ways. Christ is the Light of the world The opening sentences of Vatican II’s Lumen gentium state that Christ is the light of all nations, not the Church, but that this light shines on the Church’s face, especially in its proclamation of the Gospel. The human reception of that light—and hence of the Gospel—is, however, open to resistance and hence to distortion, misinterpretation, and rejection (see John Paul II, Dominum et Vivificantum, §§55-56, 47). Thus,...

The most bizarre presidential campaign in perhaps the entire history of the United States will culminate Tuesday. It’s well known that the Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, and her Republican opponent, Donald Trump, are both extremely unpopular among many members of their respective political parties. The U.S. bishops, by and large, have depicted them as equally unacceptable to Catholic voters because the positions of each of the candidates are inimical to various aspects of the church’s social or moral teachings. But the so-called culture warriors in the American episcopate, like Archbishop Charles Chaput of Philadelphia, have been none too subtle in...

The Archdiocese of Mexico has kindled the ire of the country’s “discrimination” police after publishing an interview with psychologist Richard Cohen, who recounts his conversion from homosexuality to heterosexuality as well as his subsequent career as a therapist for those suffering from same-sex attraction. In an article entitled “People aren’t born homosexual,” the archdiocesan weekly newspaper Desde la fe (From the Faith) writes that homosexuality is “reversible” and quotes Cohen stating that his own homosexuality was caused by the disordered relationships he experienced with his parents and siblings. “There was a lack of unity with my father and an excessive...

This is the newest Bergoglian Bishop. Clearly, Redemptionis Sacramentum never made it to Argentina. Fracto demum sacramento, ne vacilles, sed memento tantum esse sub fragmento, quantum toto tegitur. Nulla rei fit scissura: signi tantum fit fractura, qua nec status, nec statura signati minuitur. Nor a single doubt retain, when they break the Host in twain, but that in each part remain what was in the whole before; For the outward sign alone may some change have undergone, while the Signified stays one, and the same forevermore. From the Corpus Christi sequence, Lauda Sion by St. Thomas Aquinas; but what did...