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That children have a right to grow up with their biological mother and father should be uncontroversial, but unfortunately it isn’t. The International Children’s Rights Institute was recently founded in order to defend this important right. Below are three practices which it thinks often involve gross and depressingly-common violations of children’s rights.

Gladiator games obviously are no longer going on in Rome. So when did they stop? We actually know the exact day: January 1st, A.D. 404. That’s 1611 years ago today. And it was because of a saint.

When known unbeliever Ridley Scott was announced as the director, faithful film buffs feared the worst. Not only were many unsure whether he would treat the Biblical story with respect, but his film record since the smash hit Gladiator has been rather uneven (Robin Hood, Kingdom of Heaven, and Prometheus all failed to connect with wide audiences). As it turns out, Exodus is thankfully respectful of believers, if not a little ambiguous about the goodness of God. But sadly, a number of Scott’s artistic decisions effectively rob the story of its potential to entertain and to uplift. Here are five...

The phrase has become slippery. “Christian writer.” What does it mean? For some the phrase plays like a favorite old song, an evocation of the glory days of Greene, Waugh, Percy, O’Connor, et alia. Days long gone and sorely missed. For others “Christian writer” may spell an oxymoron, or at least refer to the kind of writer one would not like to meet at a Manhattan cocktail party. And for still others the phrase increasingly tends to serve as a signal that some exceptionally maudlin fiction is quivering like a bad cheese on the horizon. But even looking at the...

uropean Parliament President Martin Schulz receives 2015 Charlemagne Prize of Aachen, Schulz is acknowledged in Charlemagne's city as an "outstanding representative of the revival of European democracy". Aachen (Catholic news). Martin Schulz who has his roots in the Aachen region (born in Eschweiler, living in Wuerselen) receives the Charlemagne Prize 2015. Schulz was an outstanding representative for the revival of European democracy, it said in the grounds given by the Charlemagne Prize Board on Saturday in the imperial city of Aachen. As a pioneer, he has rendered outstanding services to....

After members of the Fellowship of Ferguson Fabricators, also known as the Congressional Black Caucus, gathered on the floor of the U.S. House on Monday to showcase the St. Louis Rams’ new touchdown signal, otherwise known as the “Hands Up, Don’t Shoot” gesture, Thomas Sowell likened the display to Nazi propaganda. I don’t usually like allusions to Nazism tossed around in our political debates—it’s too often used simply as hyperbole—but liberals today certainly are following the messaging strategy famously articulated by Joseph Goebbels: repeat a lie often enough and loud enough and people will believe it.

AUN-TV has just found out that minutes ago an injunction was filed against President Obama’s Illegal Alien Amnesty program by Freedom Watch on behalf of Sherriff Joe Arpaio. We have reviewed the key points and believe that Freedom Watch (Larry Klayman) has an exceptionally good case as the Obama Administration has set themselves up, due to the reasoning they have presented as to why “discretion” is warranted in this case. Obama has claimed they have to do it because they do not have enough money to process all the illegal aliens. However Congress not only gave Obama all the money...

Here's a kick in the pants for Wal-Mart haters and lovers of big government, two groups that almost perfectly overlap.

In the midst of the American Civil War, Lincoln noted that the country’s industry and population was still growing. In the document officially instituting Thanksgiving as a national holiday, he explicitly credited this to nothing else but God’s grace: "No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy." He then asked everyone in the country “to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of...

Retailers apparently might not be that upset if "undocumented shoppers" seeking "100% discounts" stay away.

A grand jury has decided not to indict officer Darren Wilson, the white police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, on a street in Ferguson, Missouri, in August. Christian rapper Lecrae offered his perspective of the issue on social media. Here’s what he wrote on Facebook:

The Constitutional law professor in the White House missed a few key details in his pitch to halt the deportation of several million illegal aliens, according to another law professor. “I thought it was a pretty good speech, except for the facts,” Jay Ting, a law professor at Temple said last Friday in remarks at the Heritage Foundation. For one thing, “Qualified legal immigrants have waited 20 years” to become citizens, Ting observed. Ting served as an attorney in the U. S. Justice Department during the administration of George H. W. Bush. Moreover, “There are those on the other side...

Previously, we brought you “Where God is Carved in Stone on the National Mall.” Today, we’re looking at weird pagan influences on the National Mall in Washington D.C.. While the U.S. certainly has been greatly influenced by the Christian faith, it has also been influenced by certain strains of Enlightenment thought that are decidedly un-Christian. Remember that while the U.S. was in its infancy in the late 18th century, over in Europe during the French Revolution crowds took the Cathedral of Notre Dame and the replaced the altar with an altar to Liberty. This type of thinking was in the...

On the Roman Catholic liturgical calendar, today is the Solemnity of Our Lord Jesus Christ, King of the Universe, more commonly known as the Feast of Christ the King. The last Sunday of the liturgical year (next week is Advent!), this feast reminds us that whatever earth powers may do or ask of us, Christ is the true king that should reign in our hearts. Here are 8 things about this awesome feast you may not have known:

The National "Catholic" Reporter assures us that, "The priesthood of the future will include married and celibate, male and female, gay and straight." See here. In his book "Called to Communion: Understanding the Church Today," then Cardinal Ratzinger and now Pope Benedict XVI, writing about futile reform and the "naive arrogance of the self-appointed enlightener who is convinced that previous generations did not get it right, or else were too fearful and unilluminated," explains the thinking of such deluded souls: "It thus appears [for these adolescent Catholics] as the most normal thing in the world to make up for lost...

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"F--- The Police" postercorpse Michael Brown's grave remains unmarked, while his parents prioritized going on stage at BET Hip-Hop Awards, addressing the U.N. (LOL) in Switzerland “Credit to CNN for not using the word ‘murder’ …” “So let me guess, that ‘stop killing us’ t-shirt is directed at blacks, the primary killers of blacks by a vast margin, right?"

1) You learned how to spell with this song: [video] 2) You survived a Fear Factor inspired eating game. 3) You’ve been to Mexico for a mission/service trip. 4) You’ve given your “testimony” to a large group before. 5) Your public prayers are filled with “Father God” and “just…” 6) You learned just enough on the guitar to lead worship songs with 4 chords.

Yesterday, Archbishop Blase Cupich began his tenure as the Archdiocese of Chicago’s 9th prelate. My wife and I were blessed a few weeks ago to attend one final young adult “Pub Night” with the archbishop before he vacated his seat as Bishop of the Diocese of Spokane, where he spoke on the Pope’s encyclical “Joy of the Gospel” and took questions from the audience on anything and everything. Lots of people have been saying lots of things about Pope Francis’ recent selection – good and bad, Christian and un-Christian, smart and dumb – but at the end of the day,...

Turkey was once one of the most religiously tolerant majority Muslim societies in its attitude toward Jews. The reason wasn’t so much tolerant political culture, but rather a belief that the Jews were a tranquil, loyal minority. After all, Turkish school books taught that while Greeks, Armenians, and Arabs all rose up against the Ottomans, the Jews did not. Hence, Turkey boasted along with Iran either the second or third largest Jewish community in the Middle East after Israel itself. In recent years, of course, this has changed. Just as...