Free Republic

"A life of religious devotion without kindness is not a spiritual life." -Emanuel Swedenborg This video expands on Swedenborg's assertions about what's at the root of organized religion's problems. Lyrics: Peace, please believe, that there's a lot of human need And a lot of hungry bellies that could do without human greed And a lot of people packing churches looking for a seed hoping for a higher love to patch up where we all bleed they're there to learn, it's a perfect opportunity to say hey we're all God's children and pump love and aid into the community but what...

Sunday mornings at All Souls Charlottesville are fairly common for an Anglican congregation. The Book of Common Prayer and the Revised Common Lectionary are standard, creeds are spoken together, the Eucharist is the central focus of the liturgy and the minister blesses the congregation before it scatters back into the world. But the Charlottesville, Va., congregation isn’t an Episcopal church. It’s Baptist — in fact it’s a plant of the Baptist General Association of Virginia and is celebrating its fifth anniversary in 2014. This isn’t a Baptist church in the Charleston tradition, a structured expression of worship often distinguished from...

In his weekly general audience, Pope Francis talked about the Sacrament of Holy Orders.  He explained that priests are ordained to serve, therefore, a Bishop doesn't own his diocese, just like a priest doesn't own his parish. Rather, the Pope explained, it all belongs to the Lord.  To not lose this call to service, the Pope asked all priests and Bishops to nurture their vocation through prayer and the Sacraments.  SUMMARY OF CATECHESIS IN ENGLISH:  Dear Brothers and Sisters:  In our catechesis on the sacraments, we now turn to the sacrament of Holy Orders.  Building on the vocation received in...

Left: Bishop James D. Conley after being installed the ninth bishop of Lincoln in November 2012. (CNS photo/Kevin Clark, Southern Nebraska Register) Right: Bishop Paul S. Loverde of Arlington, Va., at the Congregation for Catholic Education during his "ad limina" visit to the Vatican in January 2012. (CNS photo/Paul Haring) Earlier today, Bishop James D. Conley of Lincoln, Nebraska, issued a pastoral letter, "The Language of Love", which was addressed "to the Catholic families and healthcare providers of the Diocese of Lincoln". Of course, it has gotten attention outside of the Diocese of Lincoln, in part because contraception is...

The evangelical group Catholics Come Home has launched a new web site, GoodConfession.com, encouraging more frequent use of sacrament of Reconciliation. "Whether you frequent the Sacrament of Reconciliation or you have been away from Confession for years, we are here to provide you with easy-to-read and easy-to-use resources," the web site announces. Tom Peterson, the president of Catholics Come Home, said: "If we truly desire holiness in our Church and in our personal lives, there must be an effort to make Confession a regular habit again."

Lincoln, Neb., Mar 24, 2014 / 08:06 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Bishop James Conley of Lincoln hopes his new pastoral letter on the sacrificial “language of love” and the disruptive immorality of contraception will be received “with open hearts and open minds.” “My hope is that people, Catholic couples especially, and also Catholic physicians and pharmacists, will be willing to look at this issue again,” he told CNA March 20. “The Language of Love” is Bishop Conley’s pastoral letter on the sacrificial nature of love and on contraception, officially promulgated March 25 -- the feast of the Annunciation, when the Church...

The Bishop of Portsmouth has provoked criticism from Catholic MPs after saying that politicians who voted for same-sex marriage should be denied Communion. Bishop Philip Egan said that instead of being punitive, the denial of communion is “always an act of mercy” with the hope that individuals can be brought “back into full communion with the Church”. Labour and Conservative MPs, some of whom opposed same-sex marriage, reacted angrily, telling The Tablet that the bishop’s intervention was “a tragedy” and that ordinary Catholics would be “appalled”. In an interview with the pro-life website LifeSiteNews, Bishop Egan said: “When people are...

A health care sharing ministry is not the same as health insurance—instead, it is a form of cost sharing. The names and medical and financial needs of ministry members are published in a monthly newsletter. Members typically pay a monthly fee (also called a “share”) directly to other members whose needs are listed in the newsletter. They also agree to send cards and letters and pray for ill fellow members. According to the Alliance for Health Care Sharing Ministries, participants share more than $180 million per year for each other’s medical expenses.

In a meeting room under Holy Name Cathedral, a rapt group of black Roman Catholics listened as Barack Obama, a 25-year-old community organizer, trained them to lobby their fellow delegates to a national congress in Washington on issues like empowering lay leaders and attracting more believers. “He so quickly got us,” said Andrew Lyke, a participant in the meeting who is now the director of the Chicago Archdiocese’s Office for Black Catholics. The group succeeded in inserting its priorities into the congress’s plan for churches, Mr. Lyke said, and “Barack Obama was key in helping us do that.” By the...

The Catholic belief of “incorruptibility” holds that if a body does not decay after death, the person is holy. It takes two miracles to become a saint; the Church once allowed a perfect corpse to count as one. Incorruptibility is no longer a miracle, however, perhaps because so many tried to help God along. Oil and herbs were inserted into the muscle cavities of some older popes, for instance. When Pope Pius XII died in 1958, the Vatican used a wrapping technique similar to what was believed to have been applied to Jesus. It failed miserably. Only days after his...

Pope Francis delivers his first Sunday Angelus on March 17, 2013. Credit: InterMirifica.net Vatican City, Mar 23, 2014 / 06:38 am (CNA).- During his Sunday Angelus, Pope Francis announced that March 29-30 would be “24 hours for the Lord,” during which people can find special opportunities for prayer and the sacrament of confession. “Next Friday and Saturday we will live a special moment of penance, called ‘24 hours for the Lord.’ It will begin with a (liturgical) Celebration in the Basilica of St. Peter’s (on) Friday afternoon, then in the evening and night some churches in the center of Rome...

Bishop Camillo Ballin of the Apostolic Vicariate of Northern Arabia talks about plans for the newest Catholic church in the region and the challenges of building a unified Catholic community across ethnic groups and languages.King Isa Al Khalifah of Bahrain has given land to the Catholic Church to construct a 2,500-seat church in the Middle Eastern island nation, to be called Our Lady of Arabia. Bishop Camillo Ballin, the apostolic vicar of the northern Arabian Peninsula, traveled to the United States this month to raise a portion of the $30 million needed for the construction of the church. Bishop Ballin...

In a letter released Tuesday, Bishop David Zubik assured parents in the Diocese of Pittsburgh that the Diocese is not “using” the Common Core State Standards in its schools and has not participated in a controversial program to integrate the standards into Catholic schools. “The Diocese of Pittsburgh has not adopted the Common Core, nor have we adopted a curriculum based on it,” Bishop Zubik wrote. “Be assured that our Catholic identity is the core of our curriculum,” he added. “Our Catholic faith guides the selection of all curricula, goals, textbooks and other resources.” Bishop Zubik dismissed concerns that the...

This past weekend, Father Barron delivered the keynote talk at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress. He laid out seven keys to the New Evangelization, which include things like "lead with beauty" and "don't dumb down the message." Today we share the full video of his talk along with a summary by Catholic evangelist Marcel LeJeune. Thanks to Marcel LeJeune, Assistant Director of Campus Ministry at Texas A&M University, for sharing this summary over at the Aggie Catholics blog. 1. Lead with the beautiful It's less threatening. We are a beautiful religion. Truth/Goodness make people defensive. You can come...

A group of nearly 200 Catholic employers filed a new lawsuit in Oklahoma against the federal government on March 12, hoping to stop parts of the federal health care law that force them to provide insurance that covers contraceptives...The Catholic groups want a judge to temporarily block the law, saying the federal government’s definition of a “religious employer” is too narrowly interpreted as a house of worship. They also say countless other exemptions have been carved out for small businesses, “grandfathered” plans and some other religious groups, including the Amish and three health care-sharing ministries that are evangelical Protestant.

Bible prophecy related to the end times mentions many nations, including Libya, Iran, Iraq Ethiopia, and possibly even China and Russia, but not the United States of America. In an article on his blog, Pastor Greg Laurie gives three plausible reasons for the nation's exclusion. "Where is the United States? Why are we not in the last-days scenario?" asks Laurie, pastor of Harvest Church in Riverside, Calif. One reason why the United States is not mentioned in Scripture is perhaps because the nation "might be devastated by a nuclear war," the pastor writes. "It is a horrible scenario and one...

Antiochian Orthodox Christian Archdiocese of North America, with great sadness, announces the passing unto life eternal of His Eminence the Most Reverend Metropolitan Philip (Saliba), Archbishop of New York and Metropolitan of All North America. May his memory be eternal! Details are forthcoming.

“Just as St. Joseph was close to Jesus in his physical, psychological and spiritual growth, you too must be guardians in age, wisdom and grace.” "St. Joseph and the Christ Child" by Michael D. O'Brien During his Wednesday general audience, Pope Francis spoke about St. Joseph, whose feast it is today. From Vatican Radio: Speaking off the cuff, the Pope sent special greetings to all the fathers of the world, thanking them for what they do with their children. "Be close to your children" - the Pope said - "they need you. Just as St. Joseph was close to...

“Like Pope Francis? You’ll love Jesus.” It was a well-circulated Washington Post headline in December, but it could have been the tagline for the March 18 Francis Factor event held at Loyola University Maryland in Baltimore. As a cardinal, archbishop and four Catholic expert panelists shared insights from Pope Francis’ first year, they repeatedly shifted the attention away from the pope and onto the Son of God. Pope Francis would have done no less. “The pope is a true companion of Jesus,” said Cardinal Seán P. O’Malley, a Capuchin Franciscan and archbishop of Boston, in the evening’s keynote address. Speaking...

In my last Insights message, I prophesied that the media furor over divorce, remarriage, and the sacraments in the Catholic Church would not result, at the 2014 Extraordinary Synod and thereafter, in the same sort of breakdown in Catholic discipline that followed Vatican II (closing in 1965) and Humanae Vitae (promulgated in 1968). One reason I gave is that it is not the 1960s any more. This was shorthand for saying that the world and the Church are no longer teetering over the same precipice. The world has already fallen over, and the Church —-- in the light of Christ...