Free Republic

Imagine a president of the United States proclaiming in his or her inaugural address, “I do not believe in God. I do not believe in a hereafter…There is no hope, save in ourselves.” If something like that ever happens, writer Jeffrey Tayler’s dream will have come true. Tayler, who routinely trashes religion for the liberal online magazine Salon, complained in a Sunday article that several recent announcements of presidential candidacies have brought about “a media carnival featuring, on both sides, an array of supposedly God-fearing clowns and faith-mongering nitwits groveling before Evangelicals and nattering on about their belief in the...

No excerpt due to copyright concerns. See the story here. http://www.freep.com/story/news/local/2015/04/20/ed-fride-mayberry-guns-ann-arbor-catholic-priest/26086691/

Following his April 19 Regina Caeli address, Pope Francis lamented the deaths of migrants crossing the Mediterranean Sea and appealed to the international community to offer assistance. The Pope spoke out after a new disaster in which as many as 700 people may have perished in a ship bringing refugees from Libya toward Europe. “I make a heartfelt appeal to the international community to react decisively and quickly to see to it that such tragedies are not repeated,” he said as he requested prayers. He added, “They are men and women like us, our brothers seeking a better life, starving,...

Well, at least the Dallas Morning News was kinda nice to Liberty University. In the lede to its story on Ted Cruz in New Hampshire, the newspaper called it a "huge evangelical Christian college." Once upon a time, many mainstream media routinely slapped Liberty with the "F" word: "Fundamentalist." But the paper doesn't prove its claim that Cruz sounded less evangelical, more secular in his New Hampshire visit to sound more presidential. It therefore pushes a related stereotype: that Americans don’t particularly like evangelicals. DMN paints Cruz as a conservative's conservative as well as an evangelical's evangelical. It says the...

NOTE: Christians around the world celebrated Good Friday and Easter last week, which commemorate the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thus we began a six-part series on these events by Dr. Peter Kreeft in which he examines each of the plausible theories attempting to explain what happened to Jesus at the end of his life, particularly whether he rose from the dead.Part 1 - 5 Possible Theories that Explain the Resurrection of JesusPart 2 - Rejecting the Swoon Theory: 9 Reasons Why Jesus Did Not Faint on the Cross Part 3 - Debunking the Conspiracy Theory: 7 Arguments Why Jesus’ Disciples Did Not...

Update April 20: In keeping with our regular practice, we contacted Catholic Relief Services on Friday morning for a response prior to publication, and gave them a deadline of 4pm. In this case they did not respond. However, by Monday morning, Estridge's LinkedIn and Facebook profiles were taken down.BALTIMORE, MD, April 20, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- As Catholic bishops throughout the U.S. face attacks for requiring Catholic teachers not to support same-sex “marriage,” new evidence shows that a vice-president at the bishops’ own foreign relief agency is himself “married” to another man.Critics say the news confirms Catholic Relief Services’ history of...

They call it the “Kaduri Revival,” and reports over recent months have confirmed the teachings of one of Israel’s most venerated rabbi are leading Jews time and again to accept Jesus Christ as the Messiah. And face persecution. Baptist preacher and radio host Carl Gallups says the threats facing Messianic Jews now in Israel is “reminiscent of what we read about in the New Testament – in the early days of the church.” There, he said, Jews who followed Jesus Christ were persecuted. And today, they “are facing the same hardships and persecution the early church faced,” he said. “Gallups...

Psalm 112:1-4 Blessed is the Man that Feareth the Lord, and Delighteth Greatly in His Commandments. His Seed shall be Mighty upon Earth: the Generation of the Upright shall be Blessed. Riches and Treasures shall be in his House, and his Righteousness Endureth Forever. Unto the Upright Ariseth Light in Darkness: he is Merciful and Full of Compassion, and Righteous.

Terrorists release propaganda video showing two massacres of Christians from Ethiopia ISIS has released another video depicting the slaughter of Christians in Libya, showing footage of two massacres in which 30 Ethiopian Christians were killed.Before the executions a masked militant said: “To the nation of the cross, we’re back again… Muslim blood that was shed under the hands of your religion is not cheap.”“We swear to Allah … you will not have safety even in your dreams until you embrace Islam,” he added.Later a militant with a Yemeni accent said: “Those who convert to Islam are safe. Those who...

The Florida senator’s dabbling in multiple denominations shows a country more and more inclined toward a consumerist approach toward religion. American presidential candidates are often a good lens for looking at the state of American religion. For instance, the fact that 2012 was the first election in American history where no candidate was a mainline Protestant, after that branch’s virtual monopoly on the White House, reflected the mainline’s precipitous decline in numbers and influence over the 20th century. While the two vice-presidential candidates were boringly Catholic, Barack Obama ran as a nondenominational, basically unchurched Christian, and Mitt Romney as a...

The Shroud of Turin unveiled yesterday for the media. Now on public display, (CNS/Paul Haring) TURIN, Italy — A thin white cloth draped over the glass–covered Shroud of Turin was pulled down and billowed to the floor, marking the official opening of the venerated icon’s exposition to the public.​The unveiling came during a Mass held in the city’s cathedral of St. John the Baptist today in the presence of a small group of dignitaries, religious and lay faithful. ​“We have put ourselves in the wake of generations of pilgrims” who come to contemplate the shroud and “it will do us good to feel like we are drops in the river that has run through the centuries of a humanity...

Why Pope Francis Was Right To Call The Armenian Massacres ‘Genocide’ by Lela Gilbert 16 Apr 2015 'Their Christian faith was bruised and battered. In some cases, all hope was lost' A century after the genocide began, Turkey still refuses to accept the truth. Yet for the sake of today’s persecuted Christians, the past must not be forgotten In March last year reports emerged of a nightmare unfolding in the Armenian town of Kassab in northern Syria. A horde of al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists descended on the city, forcing the Christian residents out of their ancestral homes. It was widely reported...

This is what he (Tony Campolo) has to say about Hillary Clinton and why Christians should vote for her: “Some of my Evangelical friends raise questions about her views on abortion. But Hillary Clinton is one of the few candidates on the political stage who has a plan for cutting the abortion rate in America by at least 50 percent. I know Hillary Clinton to be a committed Christian. As a teenager, Hillary’s religious beliefs were heavily impacted by hearing a sermon by Martin Luther King, Jr. The youth pastor of her Methodist church mentored her through her teenage years...

Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone at a press conference for the 2012 USCCB Fall General Assembly, Nov 13. Credit: Michelle Bauman/CNA. San Francisco, Calif., Apr 17, 2015 / 04:13 am (CNA).- A group of Catholics promoting a full-page advertisement asking Pope Francis to remove Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone don’t represent San Francisco Catholics and misrepresent the facts, the archdiocese has said. “The advertisement is a misrepresentation of Catholic teaching, a misrepresentation of the nature of the (archdiocese’s) teacher contract, and a misrepresentation of the spirit of the archbishop,” the San Francisco archdiocese said April 15. “The greatest misrepresentation of all is that the...

U.S. Supreme Court. Washington D.C., Apr 18, 2015 / 04:25 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- The U.S. Supreme Court has continued its trend of decisions stopping enforcement of a federal contraception mandate against religious employers with moral objections. On April 15, Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito issued an order barring the federal government from enforcing the mandate against Catholic Charities affiliates, Catholic schools and social service organizations in the dioceses of Erie and Pittsburgh. “Every time a religious plaintiff has gone to the Supreme Court for protection from the government’s discriminatory mandate the Court has protected them,” Lori Windham, senior counsel for...

Around mid-April, Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia –who once wrote a letter to Barack Obama beseeching the president to reconsider his foreign policies which enable the persecution of Christians in Syria — spoke again of the threat of Christian extinction in the Mideast during a meeting with Greek Defense Minister Panagiotis Kammenos. In the Russian Patriarch’s own words: "I regularly get reports of horrible crimes that are committed there against Christians, especially in northern Iraq. I have visited those places and I remember that there were many churches and monasteries there. The city of Mosul alone had 45...

Francis Cardinal George lost his long battle with cancer and died today. This is what I wrote about him back in 2012: Francis Cardinal George of the Archdiocese of Chicago is alleged to have predicted that for upholding the teachings of Christ he will die in his bed, his successor will die in a prison cell, and his successor will be executed in a public square in Chicago. Therefore, I am unsurprised that he has written an open letter exploring the “Chicago Values” cited by Mayor Emanuel when he decided to attack the free speech rights of Chick-Fil-A: Recent comments...

A group of conservative Anglican leaders are reportedly meeting in London to discuss forming a “parallel” church that they feel would be more true to Anglican principles on positions like women bishops and gay marriage. The Independent reported that The Church of England is “at risk of an unprecedented schism” in light of the proposal by the Global Anglican Futures Conference, which seeks to counter what conservatives find is a liberal approach to social issues by the Church of England and the Archbishop of Canterbury. […] Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby said back in December 2014 that he fears the...

Bill Donohue comments on several campaigns against Catholic schools:We never hear of attempts by outsiders to dictate to Jews how to run their yeshivas. The same is true of the increasing number of Islamic schools: no one tells Muslims what their employment policies should be. The same is not true of Catholic schools. In San Francisco, outsiders have spent an enormous amount of money seeking to pressure the Archdiocese to change its prospective handbook for faculty.Outsiders, driven by the media, put Iowa Governor Terry Branstad on the firing line: they forced him to comment on Dowling Catholic High School’s decision...

The U.S. Catholic bishops could take a lesson from Mormon leaders on how to deal with religious liberty and gay rights. The Mormons have been strong allies of the Catholic bishops in the fight against gay marriage and the protection of religious freedom. But when the Mormons saw they were on the losing side in this fight, they were willing to compromise to protect what they considered essential. Like the Catholic church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints respects tradition and does not change teaching easily. But Mormons do have a pragmatic side. With the entire nation aligned...