Free Republic

Calling the Obama administration “the most tone deaf to religious liberty issues in recent memory,” Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput warned that religious freedom in the U.S. is “at risk,” and that “the more government mandates evil action, the more likely civil disobedience becomes.” Last February, Chaput urged his fellow prelates to take the “right action…whatever the cost” regarding the Health and Human Services’ contraceptive mandate, which requires nearly all insurance plans under the Affordable Care Act to pay for sterilization, contraceptives, and abortion-inducing drugs. …

Anti-Religion: Ignoring abhorrences such as China's one-child policy and atrocities condoned by Shariah law, a U.N. committee tells the Vatican to deal with abusive priests and change its teachings on abortion, contraception and homosexuality. That the report issued by the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child would mention the instances of abuse of children by priests in the United States is not surprising. What is surprising and unfortunate is that the U.N. would act as if the Catholic Church had done nothing about it and use the report as a springboard to attack the core doctrines of a...

Every conservative by now should have noticed that February has become Ronald Reagan Month for Republicans. The man’s birthday was last week, February 6, the forerunner to Lincoln’s birthday (February 12), Washington’s birthday (February 22), and President’s Day (February 17). Throughout the nation, county and statewide Republican groups have been changing their longtime annual Lincoln Day dinners into Reagan Day dinners. I’m speaking on Reagan multiple times this month, including at the Reagan Ranch Center in Santa Barbara, where we’re releasing (pardon the plug) my new book that endeavors to answer the question “What is a Reagan conservative?” Thus, this...

Courts, and integrity, say schools entitled to enforce beliefsThe New York Times recently ran a front-page story about a Catholic school outside Seattle that fired an administrator who married another man. Just a week later, the front page of the Boston Globe featured a story about a Massachusetts Catholic school that canceled its job offer to a prospective food services director when it learned that he was in a same-sex marriage. Predictably, the tone of both accounts, and the great majority of those quoted, were sympathetic toward the victims of these decisions. While I understand this instinctive reaction, I’d like...

The stories told by five top Syrian Christian leaders about the horrors their churches are experiencing at the hands of Islamist extremists are biblical in their brutality. But they are emerging as part of a concerted push by Syrian Christians to get the U.S. to stop its support for rebel groups fighting Syrian president Bashar al Assad. “The US must change its politics and must choose the way of diplomacy and dialogue, not supporting rebels and calling them freedom fighters,” says Nalbandian. Given the United States’ increased support for non-terrorist rebel groups in the wake of the Assad regime’s use...

That's why it's pretty chilling to hear Vladimir Putin hurling accusations at the West and pointing out that what's going on is identical to what went on when communism was established and religion was completely expunged from the Soviet Union. Between 1917 and 1937, almost a quarter of a million Christians were executed, and churches that survived destruction were converted into things like museums of atheism. Russian President Putin, who hasn't been shy about expressing his disapproval of homosexuality and has banned what he defined as "homosexual propaganda," had this to say: Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their...

A Latvian woman was at my home this weekend and teared up when she learned of NY Governor Andrew Cuomo’s Friday outburst that there’s “no place” in his state for pro-lifers and supporters of traditional marriage: “It reminds me of what I experienced under Communism back home, when we weren’t allowed to talk about religion in public. I came here and was so happy to be in a country where we could speak and act freely. But that’s changed now.”Indeed, it has.We’re still far from the old Warsaw Pact repression, but there’s something in her reaction worth pondering. We simply...

<p>Little Sisters of the Poor. Courtesy of the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty.</p> <p>Washington D.C., Jan 14, 2014 / 04:34 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The editors of USA Today have urged the Obama administration to stop trying to require the Little Sisters of the Poor to abide by the federal contraception mandate in violation of their religious beliefs.</p>

If we wanted your religious beliefs on abortion-pill coverage, we’d give them to you appears to be the latest in an untenable string of arguments from the Obama DOJ over the HHS Mandate. On Friday, the DOJ filed its response to the Supreme Court in the Hobby Lobby case. Politico has the latest on the DOJ’s arguments: In arguments filed late Friday, Justice Department lawyers told the court that an employer’s religious beliefs aren’t a legitimate reason to deny something as important as preventive care to an employee who is entitled to it under the health law. “The connection is...

Last November marked the twentieth anniversary of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. At an event hosted by the Newseum and the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, RFRA’s champions shared stories of how the statute came into being and the long odds it had to overcome. Though no one was resting on his or her laurels, there was a general sense of a job well-done. And then Douglas Laycock, one of the primary architects of RFRA, began to speak. He warned that millions of Americans view religious liberty as their enemy because they resent religion’s interference in their sex lives....

Government ministers of Scotland are demanding that Catholic schools must be forced to teach students about same-sex marriage and about sex clinics which provide contraception, according to The Scottish Express. A government spokesperson reportedly said, “Denominational schools, like any other local authority schools, are subject to inspection by Education Scotland on the quality of their learning and teaching.” Michael McGrath, director of the Scottish Catholic Education Service (SCES), was quoted as saying, “The SCES has encouraged the Scottish Government to move beyond the grudging tolerance which this draft and the original guidance showed towards the right of Catholic schools to...

Is this a Christian country? There are likely as many ways to answer the question as there are stripes on our flag. Yes, the country was populated at its beginning with Christians looking for a place to worship freely. But that was before we became a country. Yes, many of our founding fathers were sincere professing Christians. But many of them were not. Yes, we are Christian in the same sense as all of Europe is Christian — it is the faith tradition of the majority in our country. But no, we have rejected the faith of our fathers. Yes,...

For nearly 40 years, faith-based families have been able to homeschool under Virginia’s religious exemption statute with the quiet peace and security of knowing that their right to teach their children that God is the beginning of wisdom in every subject was unquestioned. Last week, however, Delegate Thomas Rust (R-Fairfax, 86th District) filed a legislative measure (HJ 92) that throws your rights into question and confusion by urging the Virginia General Assembly to ask the Department of Education to “study” the religious exemption statute. Asking to conduct a study is a back-door way of saying that something should be questioned....

I don’t really understand how living in an Islamic center that has collapsing ceilings and raw sewage is a part of the Islamic religion. Even the most far out Hadiths and Fatwas (and there are some really far out ones) don’t cover this.But political correctness usually trumps the law when it comes to mosques. Masjid Noor has “serious structural integrity problems and potentially dangerous conditions” that were revealed during a late-December inspection by fire officials, said city prosecutor Trisha Aljoe.“Floors and ceilings are collapsing in there, and extensive work is being done that needs a structural engineer.”Aljoe added that raw...

Pope Benedict XVI makes Archbishop Timothy Dolan a cardinal of the Catholic Church on Feb. 18, 2012 at Saint Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) (CNSNews.com) - Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, sent a letter on Friday to all the Catholic bishops of the United States reasserting the conviction of the Catholic Church that it will not yield to the Obama administration’s command—issued in the form of a Health and Human Services regulation implementing the president’s health-care plan--that Catholics and Catholic institutions must violate the teachings...

Eighteen years ago, this fellowship of Evangelical and Catholic pastors, theologians, and educators was formed to deepen the dialogue among our communities on issues of common concern, to explore theological common ground, and to offer in public life a common witness born of Christian faith. Since our founding in 1994, we have addressed, together, such important public policy questions as the defense of life, even as we have proposed to our communities patterns of theological understanding on such long-disputed questions as the gift of salvation, the authority of Scripture, and the call to holiness in the communion of saints. We...

Religious liberty homily

As the recent battle for a proper understanding of religious liberty shows, our culture and many of our government leaders and organizations are becoming increasingly secularized and hostile to religion and religious practice.Yet another example of this is a recent rule change in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF). According to this program, a person who has been engaged in Public Service employment for ten years, can have the remainder of their Student Loan form the government forgiven, presuming they have faithfully been paying it up till then.However, a recent rule change now excludes those who are involved in any...

A couple of items have appeared in the news which, when juxtaposed, go a long way to show just who the real threat is in the Church/State debate of recent decades. I’d like to excerpt these stories and make some comments. But first, we do well to recall the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution:Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.The part...

Sen. Mike Lee says a bill he introduced would prevent the Internal Revenue Service from denying tax-exempt status to any person or group that refuses to perform gay marriages. "What we're talking about here is the freedom of religious belief, the freedom of a church, for example, to adhere to its own religious doctrine so that it cannot be discriminated against by the government," the Utah Republican said in an interview with Newsmax. Lee said the federal government's failure to protect religious liberty — citing Obamacare mandates for contraceptives and abortion-inducing drugs — was a key motivation for him to...