Free Republic

No major reforms have taken place at the Department of Justice or FBI even as its politicized bungling of prosecutions and investigations has made major news.Jeff Fortenberry is not the person you’d expect to be charged with any crime, much less the crime of lying to the FBI. Painfully earnest, the Nebraska Republican congressman is a devout Roman Catholic who has a perfect pro-life voting record. He served on the powerful House Appropriations Committee, and has developed a reputation for activism on behalf of persecuted religious minorities in Iraq. It was that last focus that ended up getting him in...

Has Pope Francis stepped in it?After putting out a document calling for the blessings of people in "irregular" marital situations and gay marriage, Africa's Catholic bishops aren't taking this well.One after another, they are putting out statements of their own condemning the idea: Bishops in Malawi have prohibited the implementation of the Vatican declaration on the blessing of “same-sex couples” and couples in other “irregular situations,” Fiducia Supplicans, which the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith released Dec. 18.https://t.co/4sr3nVPiOq — Catholic News Agency (@cnalive) December 20, 2023 Cameroon's bishops issue 1 of strongest statements rejecting #PopeFrancis' Fiducia Supplicans: “we...

Prime Minister's wife calls on the leader of the Christian world to intervene and use his influence to bring about the release of the hostages being held in Gaza. “I am writing to you not only as the wife of Israel's prime minister but also as a mother and as a woman. On October 7, Hamas terrorists committed an unprovoked act of unparalleled cruelty, the worst savagery perpetrated against Jewish people since the Holocaust. They murdered children in front of the parents, burnt babies alive, beheaded men, raped and mutilated women,” Netanyahu wrote the Pope.

If you have followed my writing and speaking over the decades, you will know that Catholicism has not been a focus of my ministry, either praising it or criticizing it. At the same time, I recognize the important role of the Catholic Church in standing for the sanctity of life and the meaning of marriage. That’s what makes the recent pronouncement of Pope Francis, allowing priests to “bless” same-sex couples, especially distressing. What act of apostasy will be next?My Catholic colleague John Zmirak wrote on Tuesday, “Today I got one of those emails nobody wants to receive. You know, the...

Pope Francis rattled Catholics yet again this week with the announcement that the Church will now bless people in same-sex relationships. ... The missive authorizes priests to bless people in same-sex relationships as long as the blessing doesn’t appear to legitimize same-sex marriage, which the Church continues to oppose. And there’s the rub: what does that new blessing really do? How is it supposed to work? What does it mean? ... Priests can now bless same-sex couples, but not their actual relationships? What’s the difference – and why the distinction? There are more obscurities, enough to conclude that ambiguity has...

One of the U.S. Catholic Church's most infamous agitators, known for aggressive smear campaigns against church leaders and organizations, may soon face a reckoning in court as a result of a rare lawsuit against his operations. Gary Michael Voris, the founder of the fringe right-wing group Church Militant, is being sued by a New Hampshire priest for defamation. A U.S. District Court judge rejected Voris' attempt last month to have the lawsuit dismissed. In February, Fr. Georges de Laire, judicial vicar and the vicar for canonical affairs for the Diocese of Manchester, brought suit against both Voris and his media...

[Catholic Caucus] German church plans formal ‘ceremonies’ for blessing same-sex couplesGerman bishops will continue to work on a handout for 'blessing ceremonies' to give to priests while the vice president of the Central Committee of German Catholics expresses hope that a change in church doctrine on sexual morality follows.BERLIN (LifeSiteNews) — Birgit Mock, the vice president of the Central Committee of German Catholics (ZDK), announced that in light of Rome’s permission to grant blessings to “couples” in irregular unions and same-sex “couples” the German bishops will continue as planned to work on a handout for “blessing ceremonies” to give to...

Corporate media outlets are running salacious headlines that Pope Francis is now allowing “priests to bless same-sex relationships.” The implication from the media is that the Catholic Church has made a “radical” reversal on its stance that marriage is between one man and one woman. This is factually untrue. On Monday, the Vatican’s Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith released a “Declaration ‘Fiducia Supplicans’ On the Pastoral Meaning of Blessings.” In the declaration, the Vatican first reaffirms that marriage is the “exclusive, stable, and indissoluble union between a man and a woman, naturally open to the generation of children.”...

Pope approves blessings for same-sex couples if they don't resemble marriage Story by By NICOLE WINFIELD and DAVID CRARY, Associated Press • 1h

[Catholic Caucus] Bergoglio’s election was celebrated by the Freemasons and he continues to advance their agendaIn his first brief address to the crowd filling St. Peter’s Square that chilly evening, Bergoglio mentioned the Freemason tenet of 'brotherhood' twice. He never uttered the term 'Catholic.'(Ed. note: The following article is Part 1 of a series of blogposts adapted from a talk given by attorney Elizabeth Yore at the December 9 “Is The Pope Catholic” conference hosted by Dr. Edmund Mazza.)Introduction Dialogue dominates the decade of Bergoglio.Dialogue litters the language of Bergoglio’s apostolic exhortations and encyclicals.Dialogue was the justification for the deadly...

Controversial Pope Francis, whose left-wing leanings are alarming to more traditional and conservative Catholics, recently received members of the International Theological Commission (ITC) at the Vatican, where he sparked a new controversy by informing the gathered theologians that the Catholic Church is “female” and needs to be “demasculinized.” The ITC was established by Pope Paul VI within the then-Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1969 to assist the Vatican in examining crucial doctrinal issues. It consists at any given time of 30 theologians who serve a five-year term on the Commission. Women have served on the panel since...

[Catholic Caucus] Pope Francis: How much lower can we sink?Text of a talk given to the Latin Mass Society in London on November 24th, 2023. Mr. Sire’s audio of this talk can be heard here.When Joseph Shaw proposed this talk to me in early September, I suggested the title “Pope Francis: how much lower can we sink?”, but the fact is that since then we have been overtaken by events. Over the past eleven years we have all seen Pope Francis’s pontificate in a trajectory of accelerating descent into more and more overt betrayal of Catholic doctrine, but I must...

For centuries, the Church has battled against the heresies of Emperors, kings, tyrants, and even its own adherents. Today, Islam has slithered into some of the inner circles of the highest-ranking Church officials. One such instance is the confidant and secretary for left-wing female Archbishop Antje Jackelen of the corrupted Church of Sweden, a theologian named Jakob Wiren. In a new book, Wiren claims that the Church should regard Mohammed as a prophet.In an interview with Swedish newspaper Dagen, Wiren states, “Regarding the concept of prophecy, it’s quite open. There are prophets and prophesying even after Jesus’s resurrection, especially in...

Pope Francis is a very dangerous man.The first Communist pope called on the complete elimination of fossil fuels during his speech at the Cop28 Conference in Dubai.Francis was too sick to deliver the speech so Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican’s Secretary of State, delivered the speech to the conference.It is widely known that ending fossil fuels would kill off a significant percentage of the world’s population. And every year nine times more people die from freezing than from heat-related causes.Does the commie Pope Francis really support this?Pope Francis has called for the elimination of fossil fuels in an historic speech...

Michael Voris has been investigating the rampant theft and homosexuality going on all over the nation, but particularly in the New York diocese. He has done some investigative pieces on out of control priest and homosexual prostitution being paid for out of Church donations. We call the homosexual heretics in the Catholic Church the “lavender mafia.” The Lavender Mafia decided it had enough of Michael Voris and his meddling in their affairs. They begin to dig into his background and were going to (maybe they still will) quietly leak his past sins to the progressive mainstream media to discredit him...

Why public heretics are not true members of the Catholic Church(LifeSiteNews) — This is the fourth part of our series on membership of the Church. It examines who the members of the Church are, and who they are not. Part I can be read here; Part II can be read here; and Part III can be read here.IntroductionIn his letter to the Galatians, St. Paul warned that “there are some who trouble you, and wish to pervert the gospel of Christ.” (Gal 1:7)In the face of these false preachers, he commanded his flock to remain faithful to the true gospel...

Pope Francis has criticized certain conservative factions within the US Catholic Church, stating that they’ve replaced genuine faith with rigid ideology. He emphasized that a proper interpretation of Roman Catholic doctrine permits adaptation and change as time goes on. Pope Francis’ words highlighted the long-standing divisions within the US Catholic Church, which mainly consist of progressive and conservative factions fighting each other. Controversies have often centered around contentious issues like abortion and same-gender marriage.

The commie Pope invited a busload of 44 transgenders to the Vatican for lunch.“On Sunday, the women — many of whom are Latin American migrants and work as prostitutes — joined over 1,000 other poor and homeless people in the Vatican auditorium as Francis’ guests for lunch to mark the Catholic Church’s World Day of the Poor,” AP reported.In July, Pope Francis told a transgender that “God loves us as we are.”Also, earlier this month, the Vatican’s doctrinal office announced that transgender people can receive baptisms, serve as godparents and be witnesses in religious ceremonies in the Roman Catholic Church…

Open Letter to Francis: Why Are You Destroying the Religion of the Saints? Dear Francis,We write to you as fellow sinners, in great need of God’s mercy. In various ways — especially through your Synod on Synodality and persistent opposition to proselytism — you have asked Catholics to have respect for all baptized Christians and their particular religious beliefs. This openness to the religious beliefs of others encourages us to explain our religion to you.We are Catholics who believe the same truths, and retain the same religious devotions, that all Catholics enjoyed prior to Vatican II. We often call ourselves...

Over 200,000 minors are estimated to have been sexually abused in Spain by the Roman Catholic clergy since 1940, according to an independent commission published Friday. The report did not give a specific figure but said a poll of over 8,000 people found that 0.6 percent of Spain's adult population of around 39 million people said they had suffered sexual abuse by members of the clergy when they were still children. The percentage rises to 1.13 percent -- or over 400,000 people -- when including abuse by lay members, Spain's national ombudsman Angel Gabilondo told a news conference called to...