Free Republic

Washington D.C., Feb 7, 2015 / 05:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. bishops and several other Catholic and pro-life groups are asking Congress to nullify two new Washington, D.C. laws that they say could choke their ability to operate according to their religious beliefs. The legislation amounts to “unprecedented assaults upon our organizations,” the coalition of groups stated in a letter to all members of Congress. “Both laws violate the freedom of religion, freedom of speech, and freedom of association protected by the First Amendment and other federal law.” After a bill is signed into law by the D.C. mayor,...

Joshua DuBois, former head of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, appeared yesterday on MSNBC’s “UP with Steve Kornacki,” during which he defended President Obama’s profoundly insulting anti-Christian remarks at last Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast in the Nation’s Capital. The president admonished Christians not to think their faith somehow different than the faith that has produced ISIL (and al Qaeda and Boko Haram and Abu Sayyaf and Hamas and Hezbollah and all too many other Islamic terrorist groups). “Remember,” spake Obama, “during the Crusades and the Inquisition, people committed terrible deeds in the name of Christ.” And...

ATLANTA — Today, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta heard oral arguments in EWTN Global Catholic Network’s legal challenge to the federal contraception mandate. “What the government is saying is that EWTN isn’t religious enough; it’s not entitled to the same religious freedom as the Catholic Church, which it serves,” Lori Windham, the lead attorney for EWTN and a senior counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, told the three-judge panel at the 11th Circuit. EWTN is the largest religious media network in the world, reaching more than 230 million television households in more than 140 countries...

<p>Matthew Aune and Derek Jones were...strolling through Main Street Plaza just east of the Salt Lake Temple, the holiest site in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.</p> <p>Aune bussed his partner on the cheek. Church security guards appeared. The twentysomething men said they were cuffed and forced to the ground. The church's official statement said the couple had been "engaged in passionate kissing, groping, profane and lewd language" on private church property, an account the two men vigorously contested.</p>

I was so much hoping to get a Q&A lined up with Rep. Jeff Leach of Plano on the subject of Sharia Law in Texas. He’s got a bill that would prohibit family court rulings based on foreign legal codes if that violated our own constitutional protections. These kinds of bills and state constitutional amendments have popped in several states and have been adopted in a bunch. They’re widely accepted as trying to keep the Islamic legal code at bay. A story in the Houston Chronicle mentioned Leach’s bill in its coverage of the anti-Muslim furor at the Capitol last...

Britain's right-wing Independence Party has outraged Jews by announcing it is backing a ban on shechita, a reversal of its prior policy.Britain’s right-wing UK Independence Party (UKIP) has voted to support a plan to outlaw the ritual slaughter of animals for meat without prior stunning. UKIP is the fourth largest British party in the European Parliament. Britain’s RSPCA and the British Veterinary Association have called on the government to ban ritual slaughter. Prime Minister David Cameron has promised to allow exemptions for religious purposes such as the Jewish practice of “shechita” and the Muslim tradition of “halal.”Both forbid stunning the...

Following an outbreak of measles that was traced back to Disneyland, public-health authorities are ramping up their campaign to persuade all American parents that their children should be vaccinated. This campaign places pressure on some parents who have moral objections to the use of certain vaccines. We should not underestimate the vigor of the public-health campaign. Writers from RealClear Science and from Fox News-- not outlets ordinarily inclined to favor the expansion of government powers—have called for mandatory vaccination of all children, and even jail time for parents who resist. Nor should we underestimate the seriousness of some parents who...

Bishop Sherrington condemned the move Bishop John Sherrington says the Church remains opposed to procedures where the destruction of human embryos is part of the process The Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales has condemned the House of Commons decision to vote in favour of legalising three-parent children.Auxiliary Bishop John Sherrington of Westminster issued a statement on behalf of the bishops, stating that “Whilst the Church recognises the suffering that mitochondrial diseases bring and hopes that alternative methods of treatment can be found, it remains opposed on principle to these procedures where the destruction of human embryos is part...

A Christian church is continuing its battle for the unfettered right to rent New York City public school buildings to host worship services during non-school hours, with a conservative legal firm filing a brief with the U.S. Supreme Court that pushes back against the local government’s ban on such rentals. The Alliance Defending Freedom has asked the Supreme Court to review a U.S. Court of Appeals Second Circuit decision that upheld a city policy banning the use of public school buildings for church worship after school hours, according to a press release from the legal firm. The latest legal clash...

Hundreds of thousands of German Christians are formally renouncing their faith and leaving the church in order to escape a controversial change in the tax laws. Up to 200,000 Germans are believed to have filed official declarations last year renouncing their membership of the Protestant church, the highest number in almost two decades. A similar number are thought to have left the Catholic Church. Church members in Germany are required by law to pay tax to fund church activities, which is collected by the government. Under German law, anyone who was baptised as a child is automatically a member of...

The Obama presidency has been distinguished for unprecedented levels of federal social welfare spending. In his second term, President Obama is pursuing new and expanded federal anti-poverty initiatives. There has been a sharp increase in the food-stamp and Children’s Health Insurance programs. Obama has proposed more federal funding for Head Start and pre-school education generally, job training for laid-off workers, and Medicaid. In fact, the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) has bloated the Medicaid rolls. He is even seeking free federally subsidized community college education. I have seen numbers ranging from 79 to 126 federal programs aimed at reducing poverty...

On January 26th, the Union Theological Seminary hosted a new event called the Congressional Faith Orientation on Capitol Hill. At the event, five democrat legislators spoke about how their faith influences their work in the legislature. According to the Christian Post, the representatives included, Sheila Jackson Lee, R-Texas, Emanuel Cleaver, D-Missouri, and James Clyburn, D-South Carolina. In the past, these lawmakers have opposed pro- life legislation, and at the orientation a few of them argued against cutting funding of Planned Parenthood. In their opinion, it is ok for Christians to collaborate with the abortion giant because they are dedicated to...

Isaiah 12:2 Hinei, El is my Yeshuah (Salvation); I will Trust, and not be Afraid; For Hashem G-d is my Strength and my Zemirah; He also has become my Yeshuah (Salvation).

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who's expected to run for president in 2016, says gay marriage isn't a political issue, but a biblical issue. "This is not a political issue," Huckabee said on CNN's "State of the Union." "It is a biblical issue. And as a biblical issue — unless I get a new version of the Scriptures, it's really not my place to say, OK, I'm just going to evolve. It's like asking someone who's Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped shrimp in their deli. We don't want to do that — I mean, we're not going to do that....

Egyptian Christians have seen notable gains under the government of President Abd al-Sisi, the spokesman for the country’s bishops tells the AsiaNews service. Father Rafic Greiche pointed to three new building permits for Catholic churches. He reported that permits for Christian churches were never granted during the rule of former President Hosni Mubarak, nor under the government that followed him, which was dominated by Islamic fundamentalists. Some applications for permits to build churches date back more than a decade, Father Greiche said.

After a debate of more than an hour, Lexington's Board of Adjustment voted 6-1 Friday to allow an Islamic community center on Armstrong Mill Road. The existing Islamic Center, on South Limestone, had applied for a conditional use permit for a worship center on a 9-acre site on Armstrong Mill Road currently zoned agricultural.

In a speech to Egypt’s top Islamic authorities, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi called for a “religious revolution.” Why? Because he believes that Islam has problems: “That corpus of texts and ideas that we have sacralized over the centuries … is antagonizing the entire world.” He continued: “Is it possible that 1.6 billion people should want to kill the rest of the world’s inhabitants…?” He then warned the assembled imams not to “remain trapped within this mindset” but to “reflect on it from a more enlightened perspective.”However you interpret el-Sisi’s remarks, it’s clear that he believes the problems of Islam...

Here is my photo gallery from the March for Life in Washington, DC on January 22, 2015. I hope you enjoy the photos!!!

The story of the Pope’s actions during Argentina’s Dirty War is as riveting as it is inspiring. Pope Francis is pictured in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in a undated file photo. (CNS photo/courtesy of Maria Elena Bergoglio via Reuters) There is so much being written and said about Pope Francis that one is left trying to separate what is real from the hyperbole, the accurate from what is manipulated. It appears the more that is published, the more the man himself becomes an enigma. Nevertheless, a new book from St. Benedict Press, titled Bergoglio’s List: How a Young Francis Defied a...

I was once in Istanbul speaking at a conference on “The Coming Dialogue of Civilizations.” The Turks know (or knew before recent re-Islamization) that if Samuel Huntington’s “clash” of civilizations arrives, they’ll be caught in the middle.Because I had to visit other Turkish cities, I missed participating in a call-in (actually FAX-in) show arranged for the non-Turkish speakers. The FAX machine spat out the first viewer comment: “You are all infidels and shall die tonight.”A conference colleague, a Brit with much experience in the Middle East, related this to me later. None of the panelists were surprised. They knew it...