Free Republic

Jim Daly is president of Focus on the Family, one of the country’s biggest and best-known evangelical organizations, a group that considers opposing abortion one of its very top values. Yet Friday will be the first time Daly has come to Washington for the huge March for Life, the country’s biggest antiabortion event each year. March attendees are always overwhelmingly Catholic, but this year an influx of evangelicals will be joining them on the Mall. Daly co-sponsored the brand-new Evangelicals for Life event, held Thursday and Friday, part of an effort to refocus a generation of young Christian conservatives who...

Seeking Life, Mercy, and HealingA Common Statement by Orthodox and Catholic Bishopson the 43rd Anniversary of Roe v. WadeOn January 22, Catholic and Orthodox Christians will once again stand in solidarity on the occasion of the 43rd anniversary of Roe v. Wade. As our communities firmly believe in the sanctity of life, the faithful--along with many people of other traditions and good will--lament the legal circumstances that facilitate abortion and the cultural phenomena that present abortion as the only choice for expectant mothers experiencing difficult conditions.We recognize that the choice to abort an unborn child ultimately reflects the broken condition...

Panel at Evangelicals for Life discusses the future of the prolife movement on Thursday, January 21, 2016. From Left to Right: Russell Moore, president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention; Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family; Charmaine Yoest, president & CEO of Americans United for Life; and the Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, president of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference. Evangelicals in the pro-life movement need to go on offense in spreading their message, Jim Daly argued. Daly, president of the Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family, was part of a Thursday panel...

Does anybody, anywhere, believe that the HHS Mandate was ever intended to be anything other than a deliberate attack on the Catholic Church?Anyone?The duplicitous way that the Mandate was handled from day one should have convinced most Americans that shenanigans were afoot.The Mandate was drafted in closed-door meetings of a committee of abortion industry insiders. It violated promises that the President of the United States made to Congress in order to pass Obamacare.The administration rolled it out with an orchestrated apologia from the pandering press. Equally pandering organizations such as the ACLU joined in with assurances that the Mandate...

Introduction According to Vatican Radio, on Monday, January 18, 2016, the day after Pope Francis' visit to the Great Synagogue of Rome, the pontiff delivered a homily at his daily Mass in which he condemned Christians who are of "closed heart" and resisters to "change," calling them "obstinate rebels" and "idolaters." Stopping short of excommunicating Christians "who obstinately cling to what has always been done and who do not allow others to change," it was not until the last paragraph of his talk in the pew-less, kneeler-less chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae, that Francis attempted to make a distinction...

But after the audience with the Pope, in the course of the liturgical celebrations that the delegation has officiated in Rome along with groups of faithful who came also from Finland, it happened during a Catholic Mass that communion was also given to the Lutherans. This, at least, is what was reported by the Finnish Lutheran weekly "Kotimaa", signaling the surprise of a member of the delegation, Samuel Salmi, bishop of Oulu, according to which the Catholic officiants knew very well to give communion to the Lutherans ...

While the Synod of Bishops on the Family was being conducted in Rome last October, the revelation of a letter expressing the concerns of 13 cardinals over the proceedings marked a turning point in the event. As I reported at the time, it was on 8 October, 2015, that a close friend of the pope himself - the La Stampa journalist Andrea Tornielli - first publicly mentioned the existence of the 13 Cardinals Letter, which had been given to Pope Francis three days earlier by George Cardinal Pell. The cardinals' main concern was that the Synod was being manipulated in...

Last year, when we interviewed Raymond Cardinal Burke (see here) he confirmed Catholics can no longer look towards Rome -- towards Pope Francis -- for guidance on critical issues. The good Cardinal said, instead, to turn to the catechism and tradition. With that sage advice in mind, we bring you this guest Op-Ed, written by the highly-esteemed John Rao who, among numerous other things, was Rorate Caeli's first-ever credentialed Conclave correspondent in 2013: A Not So Surprising Surprise of the Holy Spirit: The Need to Close One's Ears to the Rehashed Messages of the Pope Today we were treated to...

Edmonton trustees trapped between government policy and the church, parent saysSome Edmonton parents are asking why the Catholic school district sent them a link to a Calgary bishop's controversial tirade against the province's new guidelines regarding gender identity in schools. One parent Michelle Comeau said she believes trustees feel caught in the middle between what the government wants and what the church wants. She thinks the district sent the letter to say, "Well we're doing what the province wants, but here's what the church wants and ... we're just caught in the middle." Last week Calgary's Roman Catholic Bishop Fred...

Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has caused controversy by blaming the rise of Daesh--in part--on homosexuality. In an interview published on the church's official website, he claimed that people were flocking to join the group because of the "godless civilization" of the West which celebrates gay pride.He lamented what he apparently considered to be persecution of so-called religious values in the West, before going on to offer that as an explanation as to why one may join a group like Daesh."We can have parades for the sexual minorities - that is supported - but a million...

......in a stunning rant given at Casa Santa Martha today. He cites what I am sure is meant to be traditional, observant (or "fundamentalist") Christians as rebellious idolaters guilty of divination and being possessed of a closed, self-serving heart (that means you). In so doing, he, intentionally or no, contradicts and rhetorically casts out such figures as St. Paul (see Galations i:8), St. Vincent of Lerins (Keep the deposit of Faith whole and entire, which has been entrusted to you, not that which you yourself have devised......), and virtually every great Saint and Church Father. It's a declaration of revolution,...

FULL TITLE: Pastors, You Must Speak Up: One in 5 U.S. Abortions Are Performed on Women Identifying as Evangelical Christians Some Christians may think, “Believers don’t have abortions, only un-churched people do.” This simply isn’t true. In fact, 43 percent of women obtaining abortions identify themselves as Protestant, and 27 percent identify themselves as Catholic. So two-thirds of America’s abortions are obtained by those with a Christian affiliation. As I share in my book Why ProLife?, one of every five US abortions—about a quarter-million a year—are performed on women who identify themselves as born-again or evangelical Christians.[i] Many church-attending women,...

The following is a public statement from Dr. Bishop Rudolf Voderholzer of Regensburg, Germany.On October 22nd, 2015, the German Bishops' Conference in a press release called attention to a gender flyer entitled "Geschlechtersensibel. Gender katholisch gelesen" [Gender Sensitive: A Catholic Reading of Gender]. Gender, as you know, is the general concept used in the English language for sexual identity and, in the current debate, refers more narrowly to the social or cultural sexual identity in contrast to biological sexuality. This publication was released in the name of the Conference of Bishops, of which I am a member, without my having...

Timely words of various Saints and Fathers on Islam In an age of ecumenism, and acceptance of false religions whilst rejecting the True Faith of God as found in Christ our God, there has been a tendency to whitewash one of the most abhorrent and fastest growing religions that grows as canker in the body. Besides the Holy Scriptures, we also have the Holy Fathers and Saints in the history of the Christian Church who have dealt with this false religion, and some have even been martyred under it for refusal to deny faith in our Lord Jesus Christ. The...

Most of the postings concerning Islam on the internet are about the atrocities being committed around the world. But we need to take more time to explain WHY these things happen. Even though the violent commands are in the Quran, many western Muslims discount them, brushing them off as not literal. So it is necessary to go to the hadith to see how Muhammad himself interpreted these things. This needs to be communicated widely to Muslims themselves to bring them out of the dark. Like many Christians who have not studied the Bible, most Muslims have never really studied the...

NEW YORK (AP) - Anglican leaders on Thursday temporarily restricted the role of the U.S. Episcopal Church in their global fellowship as a sanction over the American church's acceptance of gay marriage. Episcopalians have been barred for three years from any policy-setting positions in the Anglican Communion while a task force is formed that will try to reconcile conflicting views over sexuality in the 85-million-member family of churches. The Episcopal Church is the Anglican body in the United States. The announcement came near the end of a weeklong meeting in Canterbury, England, called by Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, to...

I sent an e- mail yesterday after attending a Muslim presentation at a local church, open to the public. It was sponsored by local religious groups to get a better understanding of Islam. My friend who I sent the e- mail too, picked up on the idea that it might be part of a nationwide effort by Muslim apologists to numb the Infidel about the Islamic threat to us Kafirs , by portraying Islam as a religion of peace. MY friend asked my permission to alert Rush and Howie Carr about this. I said OK but don't get the church...

GENEVA/VATICAN CITY, 11 January 2016 - The Lutheran World Federation (LWF) and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity (PCPCU) have invited Lutheran churches and Catholic bishops’ conferences across the world to make use of a jointly-developed Common Prayer to prepare commemorations for the 500 years of the Reformation in 2017. In a joint letter today to the Catholic Bishops’ Conferences and to LWF member church bishops, presidents and other leaders, LWF General Secretary Rev. Dr Martin Junge and PCPCU President Kurt Cardinal Koch introduce the Common Prayer for Lutheran-Catholic common commemoration of the Reformation in 2017. The document is...

It further notes: "There are specific times, however, when we must recognize that a company is very unlikely -- or unable to -- discontinue activities in certain parts of the world that we have classified as 'high-risk.' When activities in high-risk countries and areas represent a significant part of a company's business, we will avoid investing until the company has changed its business practices. Avoiding such investments supports our commitment to sustainable investing, which we believe ultimately improves the performance of our investment funds." Israel-Palestine, North Korea and several African and Middle Eastern countries round out a list of 14...

After Domino’s founder Tom Monaghan sold the pizza chain, he had a grander vision for his next project: a university and town built on Catholic beliefs. “There is not going to be any pornographic television in Ave Maria Town,” Monaghan said in 2004, in a speech on his vision for the Florida town. “If you go to the drug store and you want to buy the pill or the condoms or contraception, you won't be able to get that in Ave Maria Town.” While Monaghan retracted his statements, Ave Maria has grown into a religious-centric town like no other in...