Free Republic

The mental image of a thoroughly Communist Dorothy Day, who remained committed to Marxist notions of the overthrow of government, might be shocking.... [Yet] she maintained her Communist and anarchist views, promoted them, and brought them into the Church Christ founded.... Her goal... was to contribute to the eventual overthrow of the American government, and ... of the Catholic Church hierarchy..... I still remember trying to understand how [Day’s periodical, "The Catholic Worker"] could be both Communist and Catholic.... by the 1970s the FBI dossier on the Catholic Worker Movement was some 581 pages long. The list of Communist revolutionaries,...

A new poll shows the Catholic "faithful" are far from itThe Catholic Church does not settle doctrinal questions by majority vote. And since surveys of Catholic opinion usually record the answers of any respondents who identify themselves as Catholics, we don’t have many reliable indications of what faithful, practicing Catholics think, anyway. Nevertheless, sometimes a poll provides results that are interesting in themselves, even if they don’t offer an accurate measure of authentic Catholic opinion. This survey from the Saint Leo College Polling Institute is one example. According to the Saint Leo poll, Catholic Americans believe, by a whopping 68-18%...

Ian Paisley often divided Northern Ireland in life. But a memorial to the Protestant evangelist who struck a twilight peace with Catholics united the British territory's fractious leaders in hymns and prayers Sunday. More than 800 dignitaries from across Britain and Ireland, among them former prime ministers and paramilitary enemies, packed the Ulster Hall in Belfast to eulogize Paisley, who died last month at age 88. Paisley's widow and two sons led the service. [SNIP] The service featured a massive oil portrait of Paisley on stage and, at the end, a recording of him reading a passage from "Amazing Grace."...

666 has meaning behind it. John the Revelator was Hebrew. He would have known that each Hebrew letter of the alphabet (which is a number too) has a meaning and/or symbol to it. In the scripture it was written as six hundred and sixty six. Not 666. I find the meaning of this is to be "in the end times, a head will emerge, Satan (snake), and will hook people into sin(disbelief in my book). Allow me to show you how it works by viewing this: I believe that the letters used to write six hundred and sixty six would...

Why would intelligent, successful people give up their careers, alienate their friends, and cause havoc in their families...to become Catholic? Indeed, why would anyone become Catholic? As an evangelist and author who recently threw my own life into some turmoil by deciding to enter the Catholic Church, I've faced this question a lot lately. That is one reason I decided to make this documentary; it's part of my attempt to try to explain to those closest to me why I would do such a crazy thing. Convinced isn't just about me, though. The film is built around interviews with some...

n 1920, the Anglican Church’s Lambeth Conference solidly condemned the use of contraceptives for whatever motives. Ten years later, a new Lambeth Conference gave a restricted approval in Resolution 15 to the use of contraceptives – by married people only, and only for the most serious morally upright motives, not “from motives of selfishness, luxury, or mere convenience.” That same year the Anglican Bishop of Oxford, Dr. Charles Gore, wrote a carefully argued pamphlet refuting the reasoning and the conclusions of Resolution 15. The 1930 Lambeth Conference was a moment of truth for the Church of England, and Dr. Gore...

Pastor Knew He Had AIDS When He Had Affairs, Church Says MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Oct 14, 2014 By PHILLIP RAWLS and JAY REEVES The sun and clouds are reflected off a glass on the entrance of the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church where a portrait of pastor Juan D. McFarland hangs on the wall. After listening to his sermons for 24 years, parishioners of the Shiloh Missionary Baptist Church probably thought they knew the Rev. Juan D. McFarland. But from the very pulpit where he preached about God's love and service to the community, he delivered some stunning revelations: He had...

Before the October 10 announcement that Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi would share this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, many journalists had expected that Pope Francis would take the award. But John Allen of Crux points out that a key member of the Nobel committee has vowed not to name any Pope for the prize. In 2001, Allen recalls, Lutheran Bishop Gunnar Staalseth, a member of the awards committee, stated his public opposition to a Nobel Prize for St. John Paul II. He said that he would block any award for a Roman Pontiff as long as the Catholic Church continued...

Life Legal Defense Foundation and Alliance Defending Freedom filed a formal complaint Thursday with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Servicesover the California Department of Managed Health Care’s decision to force all employers, including churches, to pay for elective abortions in their health insurance plans. LLDF and ADF represent seven California churches that object to offering their employees insurance plans covering elective abortions and allege that DMHC’s coercion of abortion coverage violates federal law. pichealth54Last month, LLDF and ADF filed a separate complaint with HHS on behalf of employees at Loyola Marymount University that also do not want a...

The Lutheran church in the territory of park on Blyukher Street will start being built probably this year. About it the E1.RU portal was told by representatives of a Lutheran community in Yekaterinburg. Documents on granting the territory according to the lease contract are already agreed with MUGISO and underwent all necessary procedures, including public hearings. Now parishioners expect the construction license which will allow to achieve, at last, long dream – to return to residents of Yekaterinburg the Lutheran temple. The area of building – about 400 square meters. - We awaited five years for this decision, - the...

Jason Stellman’s Unmitigated Disaster Rome never satisfies. It can’t. All the pomp and circumstance, all the liturgical fanfare, can never truly answer to the true needs of man. Since Rome has abandoned the gospel of grace and replaced it with a synergistic man-centered sacramentalism, she will never be able to offer to men anything but distractions, never true answers, to his real need. I feel for those who, in their wandering through the various man-made religions, find themselves trudging over the Tiber. I know so many who have found their way out of Rome, some because they have been enlightened...

I encounter so many struggling pastors. And unfortunately, I know so many who used to be pastors but no longer hold the position. It may be through a blatant sin or a casual drifting from doing what they knew to be right, but it landed them in disaster. A pastor friend of mine said recently, “We need healthy churches and we need healthy pastors.” Amen. Agreed. We must stand guard. What are we guarding against? No single post would be perfect. Obviously sin, but I can’t address everything that gets in the way of a healthy pastor. I can only...

A large part of Christianity does not understand the holiness of God and because they fail to understand His majesty, they have a very difficult time with God's judgment against sinners. What aggravates the problem even more is when people only talk about the love of God as if His wrath is outdated and wrong. I present that we will never truly understand nor appreciate just how much God does indeed love His people unless we understand how "HOLY, HOLY, HOLY" HE is which includes vindicating His name in pouring out His judgment on sinners. The beautiful thing about the...

Rod Dreher’s post at The American Conservative, Ghosts of Colson & Neuhaus, is exceptionally interesting. It summarizes the discussions at a recent seminar hosted by First Things editor Rusty Reno, including both Catholics and non-Catholics, on the state of the culture, and more particularly on the state of the American Catholic Church. Much of the focus was on the current generation of students. There’s a lot here, but one issue stood out for me: the real debate within American Catholicism. As one of the participants at the seminar argued, there really is not, despite the media, a major debate between...

Once again, some clergy are hanging out with Planned Parenthood, united for a cause that surely opposes God’s cause for life. Held at Evergreen Presbyterian Church (PC-USA, a supporter of abortion) in Memphis , TN, the event opposing the upcoming ballot Amendment 1, a pro-life amendment, was attended by varying clergy who argue that women should have the choice to kill. In fact, Amendment 1 is rather innocuous, saying only this: “Shall Article I, of the Constitution of Tennessee be amended by adding the following language as a new, appropriately designated section: “Nothing in this Constitution secures or protects a...

Inflamed by American Prophecy, Brazilian Evangelicals Want a Woman for Brazil Presidency By Julio Severo The most important events for Brazil in 2014 are the World Cup — where the Brazilian team suffered its worst and most shameful defeat in such football event — and the presidential election. Prophecy said Brazil would win the World Cup From a rational standpoint, the election will bring another shameful defeat, because the main contenders — incumbent Dilma Rousseff and Marina Silva and Aécio Neves — are socialists. This week, these three major candidates have, joined by homosexual activists and federal prosecutors, condemned...

As I recall a time in my daughter’s life when she was not drawn toward the church or Christians, I wonder how others with Asperger’s Syndrome feel about the church, religion, and spirituality. I googled “Aspergers” and “Religion” to research Aspies’ thoughts about this matter. (Individuals with Asperger’s often refer to themselves as Aspies). To my surprise, there are hundreds of articles written about Aspies and religion. Psychology Today recently featured two articles on this very topic: Bullying, Hypocrisy, and Church: An Asperger Perspective on ReligionThe Pain of Isolation: Asperger’s and Suicide The reality of many Aspies’ experience with religious...

The worldwide Anglican Communion’s next Lambeth Conference, scheduled for 2018, has been cancelled for the first time in its history. A gathering of Anglican bishops from around the world which takes place once a decade, the cancellation, which is indefinite, is due to ongoing division over the gay clergy issue. The 2008 conference was marred by a significant boycott over the same issue. According to the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church in the US, Most Rev Katharine Jefferts Schori, the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby and titular head of Anglicans worldwide was “very clear that he is not going...

With 1 in 68 people on the autism spectrum, most churches will encounter a number of people of various ages and backgrounds who are autistic. I am autistic and a Christian, and my faith is a very important part of my life. As a child, I had little use of language and was very “typically autistic.” But as an adult, I learned to use language, and now I teach churches worldwide about autism. I work with leaders from the Church of England, and I wrote their national autism guidelines at the request of the Bishop of Oxford, the Right Reverend...

I have established that Islam has never been peaceful. But, when confronted by Muslim heretics, Protestants, especially, have an innate tendency to cower over this. Just like Protestants, these Muslims protest against their tradition, with heresies of Qur'an-alone, "tolerance", and so on. Just as Protestants attempt to discard the tradition of the Church, "the pillar and support of the truth" (1 Timothy 3:15), so some Muslims attempt to discard their tradition. These Muslims rely on faulty translations and interpretations of Qur'an 17:46 and others, taken out of context. As in Christianity, their central text does not exist in a vacuum...