Free Republic

Christians across the country are expressing concern as Focus on the Family’s “Plugged In” movie staff has released its review of the pornographic film “Fifty Shades of Grey”—especially that a critic at the professing Christian ministry watched the porn just to tell other Christians that they shouldn’t watch it. Plugged In said that it received an email from a follower who asked them not to review the film, and thus penned an blog post about the matter to explain its decision to watch and critique the material. “Fifty Shades of Grey is, without question, one of the most ‘popular’ elements...

Along with Pope Francis and so many others, I was deeply saddened to learn of the latest violence by fanatics who see anybody who disagrees with them as their enemy.These attacks threaten civilization itself.Whether it’s a massacre in Paris, Indonesia, Nigeria, Syria, Iraq, Iran, India or now in Libya and Egypt, we keep saying, “How much worse can it get?”And then we woke up Monday morning to see that it did get worse, with this brutal massacre of these young Egyptian Christians in Libya.They were beheaded for nothing less than their religious convictions. It moves me to prayers. It moves...

The presentations at two Orange County church meetings were similar. The crowds were not. One was predominantly Anglo. The other was Latino. Both focused on President Obama’s upcoming immigration plan and what church members could do to help 100,000 eligible undocumented immigrants across the county apply for deportation relief. The first application opening is days away. Local churches and other organizations are busily working to organize forums and training sessions. They’re looking for volunteers. They aim to help eligible immigrants apply for temporary reprieves from deportation that come with work permits. Such sessions are happening nationwide. A federal judge in...

February 12, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Several cardinals and archbishops, numerous academics, and even an African king are joining an alliance of conservative, pro-family Catholic groups in a petition campaign asking Pope Francis to “clarify the growing confusion among the faithful” about the Church’s teaching on sexuality, and in particular, the sanctity of marriage and sinfulness of homosexual relations. Among the over 90,000 signers are American Cardinal Raymond Burke, Chilean Cardinal Jorge Arturo Medina Estévez, Latvian Cardinal Janis Pujats, Archbishop Wolfgang Haas of Vaduz (Liechtenstein), and Archbishop Aldo di Cillo Pagotto of Paraíba (Brazil). Among the groups gathering those signatures are...

Santa Clara University, a Jesuit school in California, has hosted an on-campus "Rainbow Prom" for "people of all genders and sexualities." “All students are welcome to bring whomever they want to share the night with, but you are encouraged to bring a same-gender date in order to establish a prom environment that caters to LGBTQ students in a way that most proms don’t,” said an event description the Rainbow Prom 2015: Big Queer Party. According to the university newspaper, the prom was hosted by Gay and Straight People for the Education of Diversity (GASPED). "We decide with this event what...

The Islamic State has announced the killing of 21 Eyptian Christians who were abducted from Libya early in January. A report issued on the internet by the Islamic State said that the Coptic Christians were killed in “revenge for the Muslim women persecuted by Coptic crusaders in Egypt.” The reference was evidently to an incident in which two Egyptian women married to Copts were allegedly pressured to repudiate Islam. The Egyptian government has not confirmed the deaths of the 21 kidnapping victims, but fears that the internet report is accurate. Additional sources for this storySome links will take you to...

There is certainly nothing wrong with people trying to do the right thing and to be moral and upstanding citizens. The problem is that salvation and transfiguration are not a matter of morality. The publican and the prodigal were not moral people. They did all the wrong things, but yet they came to themselves, they discovered their hearts, and in so doing found the way, not just to moral goodness, but to holiness, to righteousness, and to feasting in the Father’s household. In the West, many speak about Lent as a period of struggle whose goal is for Christians to...

Dear friends, You are welcome in congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). We are a church that believes it is wrong to discriminate against anyone based on sexual orientation. All are welcome. We celebrate diversity. While Lutherans in the U.S. are not of one mind about sexual orientation, the ELCA, the largest Lutheran denomination in North America, has taken a stand as an open, affirming church where all are welcome. I recognize that some of you have been wounded by churches. On behalf of the church, I apologize for the hurtful comments, exclusion, and discrimination you have...

Influential Catholics—many of them supporters of Barack Obama—are advancing a proposition that may have the result of sullying the reputations of Catholic conservatives and those Catholics arguing for a robust market economy.They couch their arguments in Catholic Social Teaching; the common good, political community, love for the poor, subsidiarity. They compare this over against libertarianism; a radical individualism where each man sets and makes his own course that—damn all the rest—leads to his flourishing unless the heavy hand of the state interrupts it. Above all—to radical individualists—the State is the Enemy. Except some of what these people call libertarianism,...

S.F. Archbishop's Imposition Of Morality Clause At Schools Outrages Many By LEE ROMNEY San Francisco Archbishop Salvatore J. Cordileone sparked a protest last summer when he ignored pleas from public officials to cancel his plans to march in Washington, D.C., against same-sex marriage. Now Cordileone has prompted fresh outrage in the liberal Bay Area by imposing morality clauses on teachers, staff and administrators at the four high schools under his control in San Francisco, Marin and San Mateo counties. A newly released handbook asks the nearly 500 school employees to "affirm and believe" that "adultery, masturbation, fornication, the viewing of...

The federal government is stepping into the void of decades of inattentiveness to religious identity at several Catholic colleges. The chapel at St. Mary's College of California in Moraga is seen in a 2009 photo. (CNS photo/courtesy St. Mary's College of California) While many Catholics have been concerned for decades about professors at Catholic colleges denying core Church teachings on theological issues, as well as about disputes over women’s ordination, same-sex marriage, and abortion on Catholic campuses, few Catholic college leaders have been willing to enforce the requirements of Ex Corde Ecclesiae, which mandates that Catholic college faculty teach in...

The Irish are a people known for their pithy proverbs. Well, here’s one the committee that organizes the New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade should take to heart: There’s nothing so bad that it couldn’t be worse.As part of a well-publicized “compromise,” the committee has said it will allow both a gay advocacy group and an explicitly pro-life group to march in this year’s parade. The gay advocacy group was selected back in September. The 2015 parade is five weeks away. As of this writing, the identity of the pro-life group remains a mystery.Last fall, the parade gave...

President Obama, during his National Prayer Breakfast speech, Thursday: "No god condones terror. No grievance justifies the taking of innocent lives or the oppression of those who are weaker of fewer in number." All people at all times and locations have the right to defend themselves from terror. Despite Obama's words that have clearly angered people, we can see the following as an example: Christians within the confines of the Byzantine Empire had a right to defend themselves from Muslims who terrorized them, but we all know that Pope Urban II could in no way possible know that anyone who...

FULL TITLE: On Losing Streak in Courts, Obama Administration Goes After Nuns’ TV Network with Abortion Drugs Mandate ATLANTA — In the latest federal court case impacting abortion policy, last Wednesday the voice of the Eternal Word Television Network (EWTN) was finally heard as they presented oral arguments against the Obama Administration at the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. The face of the Obamacare juggernaut, HHS Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell, is set on enforcing the highly-contested contraceptive services provision, which mandates coverage of abortion-inducing drugs — despite the federal government racking up a series of recent Supreme Court losses on...

UK Minister's Car Insurance Says Jesus Bumper Stickers Violates Policy, Could Lead to Canceled Coverage An elderly British minister was warned by her car insurance company that her auto coverage could be voided because of the Jesus-phrased decals that she put on her vehicle. The Rev. Wena Parry, a 75-year-old minister of Independent Congregational Church in South Wales who loves to drive around with phrases like "Christ is My Lord," decaled onto her car, told BBC that she was informed in a letter from her insurance provider, Age UK Insurance, that putting such "modifications" on her car violated her auto...

LOS ANGELES – Much of the audience attending the Grammy Awards on Sunday donned light-up devil horns for the opening performance of the annual event—a presentation of the AC/DC hit “Highway to Hell.” “Party time/My friends are gonna be there too/I’m on the highway to Hell,” the Australian rock band blared out as flames blazed on the jumbotron behind them, along with pyrotechnic effects. “Hey Satan/Payin’ my dues … I’m on the highway to Hell/Don’t stop me.” The group had been introduced by rapper LL Cool J, as the audience stood to their feet. “To kick off the 52 second...

One Sunday, Robert Latimer carried his 12-year-old daughter to the family pickup truck parked in the barn. He placed the girl, disabled by cerebral palsy, in the vehicle and started the engine. He closed the doors and asphyxiated Tracy to death. Latimer become something of a hero among many Canadians, supported as a loving father for murdering his daughter, for which he served time in prison. Now the child killer has come out in support of the recent Canadian Supreme Court decision that will bring doctor-facilitated death to Canada’s disabled, elderly, dying, and mentally ill despairing citizens. From the CKOM...

President Obama took to the podium of the National Prayer Breakfast to criticize the “terrible deeds” . . . committed “in the name of Christ” throughout the pass two thousand years or so. "And lest we get on our high horse and think this is unique to some other place, remember that during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ," he said. "In our home country, slavery and Jim Crow all too often was justified in the name of Christ." While the president is right that slavery supporters often sought out validation in...

The internet blinked in disbelief today after a BBC programme held a serious discussion on whether Jesus and Buddha were aliens from other planets. The 23-minute segment on the BBC's The Big Questions TV show tackled the question: "Have beings from other planets guided our religions?" The discussion on Sunday included the head of the Aetherius Society, which believes that Buddha, Jesus and Krishna came from outer space. (snip) "It will be no surprise to the followers of those religions who've long believed that life - possibly not as we know it - exists elsewhere in the galaxy. Life which...

During Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast in Washington, NASCAR great Darrell Waltrip shared his Christian testimony with the thousands gathered, including Barack and Michelle Obama and the Dalai Lama, stating that he thought he was once a pretty good person, but “good people” go to Hell without Christ. Waltrip, a NASCAR Hall of Fame recipient with 84 wins, spoke about the importance of coming to Christ and becoming a new creature before approximately 4,000 attendees, which hailed from 170 countries worldwide. He spent most of his talk sharing his story of how God changed his life from being a man that...