Free Republic

Everyone, it seems, knows better about how to live one’s faith in the public square than the nuns who have to facilitate contraception coverage for people who are sworn to celibacy. The New York Times editorial board followed the White House lead on arguing that the nuns aren’t really violating Catholic doctrine by facilitating access to contraception, despite what they themselves believe. And even if it did, the requirement doesn’t place a big burden on religious expression: A careful review of the matter should persuade Justice Sotomayor and her Supreme Court colleagues, who may also become involved now, that the...

WASHINGTON - One of Obamacare's worst mandates that threatens to undermine our religious freedoms has run into a small, determined band of Catholic nuns. As key parts of President Obama's health care program went into effect Wednesday, a surprising Supreme Court order delayed a provision that will force religious groups to provide birth control procedures in their health insurance plans. In a David versus Goliath legal battle, Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued the stay late Tuesday in response to a plea from the Little Sisters of the Poor, a nonprofit order of nuns in Colorado who provide charitable services to low...

In the movie "The Blues Brothers," Jake and Elwood have a hilarious reunion with a nun from their younger days at the orphange in Chicago.  She tells them about the $5,000 in taxes due and the deadline.Then she did something that every Catholic will remember to one degree or another: "I prayed so hard for you.  It saddens and hurts me that the two young men whom  I raised to believe in The Ten Commandments have returned  to me as two thieves with filthy mouths and bad attitudes.Get out!  And don't come back until you've redeemed  yourselves!" And so they did.They put the band together and...

The man whose last controversial movie was "Bully" certainly knows how to behave like one. Just ask New York Post film critic Kyle Smith, who dared to give a thumbs down to Hollywood bigwig Harvey Weinstein's latest anti-Catholic attack film, "Philomena," carefully timed for release during the Christmas season. Weinstein took out a full-page color attack ad in The New York Times singling out Smith for abuse. It got his attention. "I've never been flogged in the public square, but now I have a rough idea what it's like," Smith responded. In all capital letters, the ad proclaimed "The New...

(Vatican Radio) At the end of his General Audience on Wednesday, Pope Francis called on everyone to pray for a group of nuns taken by force from the Greek Orthodox Monastery of Saint Tecla in the ancient Christian town of Ma’lula in Syria. “Now I would like to invite everyone to pray for the religious sisters of the Greek Orthodox Monastery of Saint Tecla in Ma’lula, in Syria, who, two days ago, were taken away by force by armed men,” he said. “Let us pray for these sisters, and for all those who have been kidnapped on account of the...

ObamaCare: A group of nuns dedicated to caring for the elderly poor is suing to prevent an uncaring administration from shutting down their compassionate order over their refusal to obey the contraception mandate. There is no clearer or sadder example of the Obama administration's war on the First Amendment's guarantee of religious liberty than the demand by the Department of Health and Human Services to violate their religious consciences or pay heavy fines. HHS has ruled that if the Sisters don't offer insurance policies to their employees that include free coverage for sterilization procedures, artificial contraceptives and abortifacients, these vowed-to-poverty...

A Catholic religious order, the Little Sisters of the Poor, has filed a lawsuit against the Obama administration asking the courts to protect them from being forced to comply with the HHS abortion mandate. The mandate compels religious groups to pay for birth control and drugs that may cause abortions. Yesterday, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty filed a lawsuit on behalf of the Little Sisters of the Poor, a religious order of Sisters dedicated to caring for the elderly poor. Without relief, the Little Sisters face millions of dollars in IRS fines because they cannot comply with the government’s...

Sisters record album as outreach to God Video only at linky

Sr. Florence Deacon, OSF, outgoing president of the LCWR. Credit: Lisa Johnston for CNA. South Bend, Ind., Aug 24, 2013 / 06:02 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Despite a shift in tone, virtually no progress has been made toward the Vatican's goals for the reform of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, says an author who has closely followed the group. Group members “are making an effort to be more conciliatory, at least verbally,” said Ann Carey, author of the 1997 book “Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women's Religious Communities” and the newly-released “Sisters in Crisis Revisited: From Unraveling to...

People’s World is the flagship publication of Communist Party USA, and the successor publication to the Daily Worker. It recently carried back-to-back articles that were very revealing of a dubious but old tradition among the American left. To wit: America’s communists have always found allies—useful idiots, dupes—among the liberal/progressive left, the mainstream Democratic Party, and (especially) the religious left. As to the latter, I’m ever reminded of the words of the late Herb Romerstein, who told me: “The religious left; they were the biggest suckers of them all.”

Mother is putting food on the table for the Sisters: she shot her first deer using our nuisance permit.

Sister Megan Rice of the Sisters of St. Francis of Penance and Christian Charity was reportedly found guilty of two felonies related to her breaking into a nuclear weapons production facility in Tennessee. Sentencing for the Villanova and Boston College graduate is expected to take place later this week. Sister Megan could face up to thirty year in the joint. In the past, she's spent 6 months in jail for her "protests. It seems that Sister, along with two other "activists" cut through the chain link fence, illegally entered the property, caused damage to the tune of over $1,000. And...

Pope Francis told 800 nuns gathered at the Vatican on Wednesday that they should be spiritual "mothers" rather than "spinsters", and stressed the importance of showing obedience to the Catholic Church, reports AFP in The West Australian.The pontiff, 76, told the assembly of the International Union of Superiors General they should strive for "a fertile chastity, a chastity which produces spiritual children within the Church.""The ordained woman is a mother, she must be a mother and not a spinster! You are mothers, like the figures of Mary and the Mother Church," he told the nuns representing women's religious orders...

MELROSE PARK, IL, April 22, 2013 (LifeSiteNews.com) - This afternoon the Missionary Sisters of St. Charles Borromeo, Scalabrinian and Stone Park community residents held a press conference to celebrate the victory in preventing the strip club “Get It” from opening next to the convent. This group, along with P.A.S.O.- West Suburban Action Project, organized a grassroots campaign that resulted in a 500-people vigil in Stone Park, (the largest public demonstration in the town’s history) as well as over 3,000 signed petitions against the strip club and international, national and local media attention. The community sent a resounding message: “Get It,...

Burying the dead is a work of mercy. So, too, is voting for them, according to Sister Marguerite Kloos. Or at least that’s what she thought last year until Ohio investigators nabbed her for an act of voter fraud. This week she plead guilty to the charge of voting twice, acknowledging that she forged the signature of a deceased nun, Sister Rose Marie Hewitt, on an absentee ballot.“When the absentee ballot was received at Ms. Hewitt’s address, (Kloos) opened the envelope, forged Ms. Hewitt’s signature, voted Ms. Hewitt’s ballot, and mailed the ballot back to the Board of Elections,” according...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — Pope Francis reaffirmed the Vatican's call for reform of the U.S.-based Leadership Conference of Women Religious. Archbishop Gerhard Muller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, told the U.S.-based nuns' group that he had "recently discussed the doctrinal assessment with Pope Francis, who reaffirmed the findings of the assessment and the program of reform for this conference of major superiors." The doctrinal congregation met April 15 with the LCWR leadership and Seattle Archbishop J. Peter Sartain, who had been assigned by the Vatican to oversee the reform of the pontifically recognized leadership...

Benedictines of Mary, Queen of ApostlesLatest album, Angels and Saints at Ephesus,will be released in stores on May 7, 2013.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RHXaYxfg1As&feature=youtu.be While recording for an upcoming album with De Montfort Music, the Dominican Sisters of Mary Mother of the Eucharist, received news that rocked the world. "White Smoke!" Spirit Juice Studios, filming for their EPK, was there to capture the excitement. Dominican Sisters of Mary http://www.sistersofmary.org

What do the Aryan Nations, the Ku Klux Klan and the home of Spokane’s Singing Nuns have in common? They’re all on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s map of “hate groups” in the Northwest. Mount St. Michael, home to a Latin Rite or Tridentine Catholic church, school and convent north of Spokane, has been listed since 2006 by the law center as a radical traditional Catholic group and accused of anti-Semitic activities. Last week, the law center released the annual update of its “hate map” of groups around the country, which includes an interactive, easy-to-use online graphic. Mount St. Michael...

ABC News reporter David Wright chose an odd metaphor to describe criticism of the possible timing of the selection of Pope Benedict XVI's successor. Wright, speaking live from the Vatican on today's Good Morning America, reported that yesterday the Vatican spokesman had floated a trial balloon suggesting that the conclave to choose a new Pope could be moved up from its originally established date of March 15th. Continued Wright: "but in other quarters of the Church, that trial balloon is being shot down faster than an old-school nun might rap you on the knuckles." View the video here.