Free Republic

Questioning “the motive and the reasoning” behind support for regime change in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, and Libya, the head of the Chaldean Catholic Church said that Islamic fundamentalist regimes are “even worse” than authoritarian ones. Under such regimes, Christians “will be considered second class because of their religion in a country in which Islam is the only standard,” said Patriarch Louis Raphaël I Sako. “I think moderate Muslims should be aware and assure Christians that they, indeed, will be respected as equal citizens.” The patriarch made his remarks amid rising violence between Sunni and Shiite Muslims in Iraq. The nation’s...

The following is the homily Katherine Jeffords Schori read in Caracas, Venezuela. The topic is the passage from Acts, wherein Paul drives out what the bible plainly identifies as a demon from a girl. The beauty of this place is legendary. It is beautiful – and fragile, for its beauty depends on a dynamic balance among the parts of this island system. Many people don’t notice beauty around them until it’s gone. When we go somewhere that looks very different, often it takes a long time to appreciate that it has beauty, even though it’s a different kind of beauty....

The American Atheists of Cranford, N.J., announced Friday they will be sending books on atheism to the Georgia Department of Natural Resources to be placed next to Gideon Bibles inside every cabin and lodge at the state's parks. On April 28, Ed Buchner, the former president of American Atheists, a nonprofit organization that was founded by Madalyn Murray O'Hair in 1963, complained to the Department after he found "nine Bibles" inside his cabin, according to American Atheists. In a move to avoid controversy, and a potential lawsuit, the decision was made to remove all Bibles from the state's parks that...

The revelations of the scandals within the Obama administration in the past couple of weeks make those of us who are old enough recall 1973, when Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s investigative reporting and then the hearings of a special Senate investigative committee brought to the public one astounding detail after another about Watergate. The current developments have been even more striking. One scandal or possible scandal after another, reaching across different executive branch agencies, have come to light in breathtakingly brief succession. There has been the apparent cover-up about the Benghazi episode, the Justice Department’s open-ended seizure of phone...

The linear conception of history is so seductive, even antagonistic groups like Enlightenment philosophers and Marxists adopt it. It pervades their attitude toward religion. Both believe society matures as it sheds its religious heritage. Infantile societies practice religion, but progressive societies are secular, they maintain.

RICHLAND, Wash. (BP) -- A florist who was told by the state of Washington she must provide her services for a gay wedding is countersuing the state, saying she has served gay customers her entire career and is concerned the state's position on gay weddings will harm religious freedom. The countersuit by Arlene's Flowers came weeks after Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson sued the florist when its owner, Barronelle Stutzman, declined to design a wedding floral arrangement for a longtime customer who is gay. Washington legalized gay marriage last year. The countersuit, filed by the group Alliance Defending Freedom, says...

New York City, N.Y., May 18, 2013 / 06:02 am (CNA).- Bill Donohue of the Catholic League said he was “stunned” that the IRS investigated his organization in 2008, charging that the Democrat-leaning group Catholics United filed the complaint and used it to argue that CNN should drop him as a commentator. “This was a fishing expedition meant to intimidate me and create a chilling effect on my freedom of speech,” Donohue said. “I still couldn’t believe that a couple of weeks after the election, I was being asked to spend my entire Thanksgiving trying to defend the Catholic League...

I got an interesting port on my Facebook page. Yes, I still have one that I use to keep up with friends and family, but it is quickly becoming very adversarial. I'll let the comments below speak for themselves. Let me know what you think.

The 2011 census puts the Muslim population of the UK at around 5 per cent, a total that has been boosted by around 600,000 Muslim immigrants who have arrived in the UK over the past decade. Keith Porteous Wood, executive director of the National Secular Society, said to UK daily the Telegraph that the decline of Christianity is “inevitable.” “In another 20 years there are going to be more active Muslims than there are churchgoers,” he said.

Many Vatican-watchers interpreted the election of Pope Francis as Rome’s counter-offensive against the rise of neo-Pentecostalism in the global South. Pentecostalism is the fastest growing sect in the Latin America, where a third of the world’s Catholics live, and is giving the established Roman Church a run for its money — so to speak. The latest figures show that the numbers of Pentecostals throughout Latin America has soared since 1970 — when they represented a mere 4 percent of the population — to nearly 30 percent. In Guatemala it is estimated that four in ten are Pentecostals. Reasons for the...

New allegations claim the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) not only delayed the applications of new conservative groups, but also targeted a Christian group, Family Talk Action, and a well-established group, the Leadership Institute. In September 2011, well-known family advocate Dr. James Dobson's newest Christian ministry, Family Talk Action Corporation, filed a Form 1024 with the IRS requesting 501(c)(4) status. The attorney in charge had 26 years experience of filing these forms. "The Family Talk application was every bit as compliant as the ones he'd filled out in the past," said Alex McFarland, the group's Director of Apologetics. McFarland told The...

Isaiah 26:8 O Lord, we Love to Do Your Will! Our Heart's Desire is to Glorify Your Name.

Dennis Prager and others have done an excellent job of highlighting the genuinely anti-Semitic content of a recent Church of Scotland publication entitled “The Inheritance of Abraham? A Report on the ‘Promised Land,’” and Prager has even called it “ugliest depiction of Jews since medieval times.” What has not been mentioned, however, is the great tradition of philo-Semitism in recent Scottish Church history, making the contrast all the more extreme. Some of the great Scottish Presbyterian leaders of the 19th century built on the heritage of English Puritan theologians like John Owen (1616-1683), who wrote, “The Jews shall be gathered...

The memorable play of Irish author and playwright Samuel Beckett, "Waiting for Godot," has become a metaphor for situations in which people wait for someone unlikely to come, or do not even know what they are expecting. They just keep waiting and waiting. The handful of Orthodox Greeks left in Turkey appear to be waiting for Godot, too, caught in a very typical Turkish situation. The Theological School of Halki, which is attached to the Ecumenical Patriarchate, has been closed down since 1971. Almost every day for the past 42 years, the Orthodox community has been anticipating the news of...

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has denied asylum to a Christian family that came to America to homeschool their children. As previously reported, Uwe and Hannelore Romeike fled to the United States in 2008 after German authorities demanded that they stop homeschooling their six children. Homeschooling was made illegal in the country in 1938 under the dictatorship of Adolph Hitler, and the law has never been repealed.......

Syrian troops crushed armed insurgent groups on Saturday at the southern edge of the capital. According to a Syrian military source, as a result of the anti-terrorist operations, the Deraa-Damascus highway, which leads to the border with Jordan, has been completely cleared of terrorist and insurgent forces, Voice of Russia Reported.The Army, reports the SANA news agency, has engaged in a successful offensive in the southern direction.“In the area of ​​Khirbet Gazzalya the army encircled and destroyed large patches of armed extremists who terrorized citizens, and engaged in sabotage and looting,” said the agency.The army also liberated Jassem on the...

The Controversy Over the Third Secret: Objections and Responses | Fr. Andrew Apostoli, C.F.R. | Appendix D from Fatima For Today: The Urgent Marian Message of Hope The Third Secret has been dealt with in two chapters in this book. Chapter 8 presented the content of the Third Secret as Lucia, Francisco and Jacinta saw it revealed to them. Chapter 16 presented how Sister Lucia wrote the Third Secret on a separate manuscript and then placed it in a sealed envelope. The chapter also traces what popes John XXIII, Paul VI and John Paul II did after reading it. The...

Proposed legislation would legalize abortion when the mother’s life is at risk. But the measure is medically unnecessary, many Irish doctors say.Ireland’s coalition government is pushing ahead with controversial plans to legalize abortion despite growing opposition from within the medical community. Pro-life campaigners have also dismissed claims by Prime Minister Enda Kenny that the draft law is limited in scope, saying it will lead to widespread abortion. Ireland and Malta are currently the only countries in Europe where abortion is still illegal. A draft of the so-called Protection of Life in Pregnancy legislation was published after protracted negotiations between the...

Beijing, May 13, Interfax - Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia believes the Russian Orthodox Church and religious organizations of China could work together on strengthening morals in the world. "We have common moral tasks. These are global tasks. We see a sharp moral decline in many countries of the world, especially in the Western civilization," the patriarch said during a meeting with representatives of Chinese religious communities in Beijing on Monday. All laws are based on morals and moral decline "will lead to the collapse of the entire system of human relations and mankind will commit suicide," he...

The Blessed Virgin Mary is venerated under this title following apparitions to three shepherd children — Lucia, Jacinta and Francisco — in Portugal in 1917. The message of Fatima includes a call to conversion of heart, repentance from sin and a dedication to the Blessed Virgin Mary, especially through praying the Rosary. This optional memorial is new to the USA liturgical calendar and is inscribed on May 13. According to the 1962 Missal of Bl. John XXIII the Extraordinary Form of the Roman Rite, today is the feast of St. Robert Bellarmine. He was famous throughout Europe as a theologian,...