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Catholic cardinals need to step up? Where's Cardinal Dolan? every single Christian denomination must rise up in arms against this "Muslim-defensive" statement. Perhaps there is a fear of stoking the fires in the Middle-East but there comes a time when fear must give way to political courage. Obama needs a ferocious rebuttal on the history of the Crusades who sought to recapture the Holy Land taken by Muslim invaders.

Germany Clashes with Pope over Child Discipline By Julio Severo (with Associated Press) Germany has on Friday rejected as “unacceptable” the pope’s comments that it’s OK to spank your children to discipline them, as long as their dignity is maintained. Francis made the remarks this week during his weekly general audience, which was devoted to the role of fathers in the family. Francis outlined the traits of a good father: one who forgives but is able to “correct with firmness” while not discouraging the child. “One time, I heard a father in a meeting with married couples say ‘I...

Pope Francis’ concept of the Catholic Church is a welcoming home for all the Lesbians, Gays, Transgenders, Bisexual, divorced and remarried, Evangelicals and atheists. He feels that these people have been oppressed by the Church by Her condemnation of these “sins” and he wants to welcome them into the “hospital church” to be accepted and healed. I think he puts them in the same category as the poor, the unemployed youth and anyone else who may have been oppressed. Although his compassion is to be commended, it is misplaced. These people are living in sin and will go to hell...

MSNBC's resident socialist Lawrence O'Donnell made a whopper of a historical claim on the Thursday edition of his program. In the midst of ripping President Obama's controversial National Prayer Breakfast speech from earlier in the day, O'Donnell asserted that "Catholicism was the most murderous force on the face of the Earth for hundreds of years," as he ripped President Obama's controversial National Prayer Breakfast speech from earlier in the day. [video below] The left-wing host led the segment by mocking the breakfast as "the place where presidents go to pander to leaders of organized religions once a year." He continued...

At this morning’s mass in St. Martha’s House Francis talked about "the martyrs of our times, men, women, children who are being persecuted, hated, driven out of their homes, tortured, massacred … who are meeting their end under the authority of corrupt people who hate Jesus Christ”

Pope Francis will address a joint meeting of the House and Senate on Sept. 24, becoming the first pontiff to do so, House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday. "We're humbled that the Holy Father has accepted our invitation and certainly look forward to receiving his message on behalf of the American people," Boehner, R-Ohio, told reporters. Boehner is Catholic and extended the invitation for the pope to speak to lawmakers. During his planned trip next fall, Francis is also expected to visit the White House as well as speak at the United Nations in New York and participate in a...

Pope Francis has decried the “inhuman” conditions facing migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border and has encouraged communities there not to judge people by stereotypes but welcome migrants and work to end discrimination. Francis made the appeal in a letter to a Jesuit priest who helps organize Catholic teens in Nogales, Arizona, to support the Kino Border Initiative, which advocates a more humane solution to migration. The letter was dated Dec. 19 but was made public on Kino’s website recently. […] Francis has made migration one of the priorities of his pontificate and will likely raise the issue when he visits...

As noted here, Pope Francis, who once boasted of having been a bouncer,"has called for more women in the International Theological Commission, even after tripling the number of women on the team this past September. 'In the ever more diverse makeup of the Commission,' he said, 'I want to see a higher presence of women.' The Pope also said recently that it is chiefly women who pass on the faith, and urged men to listen to women more and not be so 'macho.' He said that men often don’t allow enough room for women while 'women are capable of seeing...

From The National "Catholic" Reporter: "Gay Catholic leaders have expressed their pleasure following reports that Pope Francis, in an unprecedented move, met last week with a transgender Spaniard at the Vatican. While the Vatican has yet to confirm the meeting, it has been widely reported in the press, and there has been no Vatican denial. 'I think that his meeting with the transgender man was a gesture not only of pastoral care, but of genuine interest in learning about the transgender experience from a firsthand source,' Francis DeBernardo, executive director of New Ways Ministry, told NCR in an email. Said...

Balloon-ey!: Vatican takes wrong lesson from dove attack by Daniel Clark On the last Sunday of January, the Vatican released the balloons of peace from St. Peter’s Square. You probably recognize this as a biblical allusion to the Great Flood, when Noah released a balloon that returned to him with an olive leaf in its beak. Mind you, balloons don’t have beaks, which is what made it so miraculous. Pope John Paul II had started an annual tradition of releasing two doves on that particular day, but last year when Pope Francis let the birds loose, a crow and a...

Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Gina McCarthy met with Vatican officials that helped draft Pope Francis’ climate-related encyclical on Friday, The Associated Press reports.An encyclical, a letter from the pope addressed to faithfuls worldwide when he feels he needs to reach them, is set to be published in June and might make environmentalism a Catholic doctrine like Pope Pius IX’s encyclical about infallibility. It might also be a simple condemnation of human destruction of the environment like Pope Pius XI’s encyclical against Italian Fascists. The visit was aimed at showing the Holy See that the Obama administration share similar thoughts on...

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...

The lead organizer of the Vatican’s Synod on the Family has revealed that Pope Francis approved the controversial mid-term report from the meeting before it was published. Until now, Pope Francis’ role in the document’s publication has been left to conjecture. The Relatio post disceptationem, as it is called, was intended as a provisional summary of the debate from the Synod’s first week. But after it was released it was strongly criticized by numerous Synod fathers, including Cardinals Raymond Burke, Gerhard Muller, George Pell, and Wilfrid Napier, some publicly and some behind meeting doors. Some critics have even described it...

Pope Francis has not been re-inventing the Church as much as the media would like people to believe. To say this isn’t to detract from Francis’ pontificate. He has certainly been a unique pope in many respects. As the first bishop of Rome to hail from South America, he has his own personality, style, and priorities – as does every pope. And it’s not his job to re-invent the faith anyway. As the bishop of Rome, it’s his job to simply defend and preach the faith that was passed on to him. Yet time and time again, we’ve seen headlines...

The U.S.-Mexico border may someday see a high-profile crosser – Pope Francis. The intrepid pontiff raised the possibility that among his future trips could be entering the U.S. border from Mexico. The pope, who made the comment while flying back recently from the Philippines, said he would do it to show solidarity with immigrants, according to the Latin Post. "To enter the U.S. from the Mexico border would be a beautiful sign of brotherhood and help for immigrants," the pope said, according to the Post and other outlets. There are some logistical factors, however, that the pope indicated he would have...

Don’t pick a political fight with Pope Francis? The title of Rachel Lu’s recent essay and the timidity behind it reminds me of a old Jewish joke. Max and Moishe are being escorted to the execution chamber in a Nazi prison. In a sudden gesture of defiance, Max raises his arm and gives the guards his middle finger. Horrified, Moishe pulls his arm down and blurts, “Please, Max, don’t make waves.” Just so all the reflexive excuses for Pope Francis’ dismaying behavior and increasingly obvious ideological bent. Lu forgets there exists such a thing as a loyal opposition. She cites...

More than “theoretical discussions,” what unites Christians is encounter, and a willingness to “challenge one another,” said Pope Francis as he marked the conclusion of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. “Christian unity will not be the fruit of subtle theoretical discussions in which each party tries to convince the other of the soundness of their opinions,” the Pope said during vespers at Saint Paul Outside the Walls Basilica on Jan. 25. “To plumb the depths of the mystery of God, we need one another, we need to encounter one another and to challenge one another under the guidance...

Questions that need to be asked about Islam were asked by Pope Benedict nearly ten years ago.On a plane ride between Sri Lanka and the Philippines this week, Pope Francis made headlines while talking with reporters about the moral limits to free expression. The issue came up, of course, in the wake of the attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in France, which Pope Francis has strongly condemned. The attacks in Paris — including one at a kosher deli — along with the slaughter that Boko Haram inflicts in Nigeria, the terrorist attack in the Lindt café in Sydney...

Church officials continue to work on the agenda of Pope Francis' planned visit to the United States in September, The New York Times reported. The schedule for the Sept. 22-27 papal visit calls for stops in Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., and one very busy day in New York City, the Times said.

Follow up on: New Pope Arrives 3-13-13: Bergoglio Anagram and "Last Pope Prophecy", A21, Purpose Driven, Seagull Symbolism 3-13-13 "This post...in general, [is] to look at the result of the selection of the new pope to try and determine whether what happened fits the basic scenario with regard to the "Zionist global agenda"... Three things are apparent right of the bat. They are (1) the name of the selected pope, (2) the papal name chosen by the selected pope, and (3) the meaning of that name as indicative of what his mission will be and the significance of that "mission"...First...