Free Republic

John Allen looks at the background of Pope Benedict's coming trip to Fatima, Portugal. He notes that the five foreign trips the Pope has scheduled for this year-- to Malta, Portugal, Cyprus, Great Britain, and Spain-- "are almost laid out in ascending order of difficulty." Benedict in Portugal: A different crisis, secularism, and 'Marian Cool' As fate would have it, Pope Benedict XVI's five foreign trips in 2010 are almost laid out in ascending order of difficulty. Last month's weekend stop in Malta, arguably the most Catholic society on earth, amounted to the warm-up act, while next week's four-day swing...

A few days ago, I got curious about the wording of those proclamations issued by several state governors announcing Confederate History Month. (Mostly, I wondered why a patriotic current citizen of the United States of America would want to celebrate what were unarguably the deadliest traitors in our nation's history.) As I found examples of the proclamations online, I was struck by some of what I'd consider the "boilerplate," the way the date of issuance is described. Here's how the governor of Georgia did it: "In witness thereof, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Seal of the...

Monday March 29, 2010 Cardinal Ouellet: Quebec Must 'Return to God' By Patrick B. CraineQUEBEC CITY, Quebec, March 29, 2010 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Cardinal Marc Ouellet, Archbishop of Quebec and Primate of Canada, has once again called for Quebec to renounce its anti-religious secularism and return to its Catholic-Christian roots.“I sadly note that the total rejection of our Catholic identity leads more and more to a total mess in education,” the Cardinal wrote last month in Le Soleil.  “The byproducts are well known: fragile couples, broken families, massive abortions, soon euthanasia, suicides at alarming rates, evident school dropouts, work seven...

A. A. Gill, contributing editor at Vanity Fair, usually writes restaurant reviews. He’s probably pretty good at it. He should stick to the food. Unfortunately, however, after a recent visit to the Kentucky’s Creation Museum, he could not contain his disdain. In a mocking article in Vanity Fair, he made fun of the city of Cincinnati as being “Behind the times” and its residents as “Neanderthals lacking technology.” Some Cincinnatians took umbrage. And then Gill took some back. Going just a bit too far, in my opinion. In a recent interview with Meghan Fox, Gill hurled a whole new...

Vatican City, Mar 12, 2010 / 12:08 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict met with priests and bishops participating in an international theological convention on Friday and spoke with them on the importance of understanding what it means to be a priest. This awareness of their identity is all the more important as secularism advances and some try to reduce the priesthood to being almost a 'social worker.'Speaking of priestly identity in the modern "policentric" context, which often fades our idea of identity, "it is important clearly to bear in mind the theological specificity of ordained ministry, in order not to...

I find it quite frightening on how badly prepared the Church in England and Wales is to combat secularism and opposition to the Church's teaching. We give the impression that we don't really care. This weekend there will be a demonstration against the Papal visit outside Westminster Cathedral followed by a rally outside the Italian embassy, presumably in the hope of attracting the attention of the Italian media, amongst the speakers will be Peter Tatchell, it advertises itself as: We support: · Women's equality and reproductive rights · Equal rights for LGBT people · A secular Europe - immune to...

The View from Europe By Rosa Anna Tremoglie The legal squabbles in America about the separation of church and state is at once, disconcerting, perplexing and amusing to Italians. It is with a sense of irony that we view this continuing argument. Italians were...

At a time of year when faith is celebrated by most Americans, it may surprise some to learn that many students of faith and history believe we are living in a post-Christian age. It is not apparent at the local malls now so festively decorated, but it can be seen in some telltale cultural indicators. One of those is the number of attacks on people of faith, particularly Jews. Throughout much of the world today, where Christianity is in decline attacks on Jews are on the rise. In post-Christian Europe, Jews are often victims of a deeply entrenched anti-Semitism. Synagogues...

Introduction The famous evolutionist Julian Huxley once said, "Any view of God as a personal being is becoming frankly untenable. The difficulty of understanding the functions of a personal ruler in a universe which the march of knowledge is showing us ever more clearly as self-ordered and self-ordering in every minutest detail is becoming more and more apparent" (Essays of a Biologist [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1923], p. 217). His sentiments were echoed by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell: "That Man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin,...

  As Catholics, it comes as no surprise to us that the human brain is hard-wired for religion. We believe in a God who created us in His image so that we would come to know and love Him. But for Enlightenment thinkers, who had committed themselves to the "liberation" of human thought from the shackles of religious dogma, the news would not have been welcome at all.   If political society, as Hobbes wrote, abhors a vacuum, the same is true of religious belief. One cannot destroy without creating something else in its place. The new society or...

The first of five U.S. cities will be hit by a new atheist holiday ad campaign this Thanksgiving weekend. Washington, D.C., residents can expect to see ads proclaiming, "No God?...No Problem!" inside buses and rail cars. Washington, D.C., residents can expect to see ads proclaiming, “No God?...No Problem!” inside buses, rail cars and on the side or tail of buses by week’s end. The campaign, sponsored by the American Humanist Association, will then target the transit systems of New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. According to AHA, the holiday ad campaign is the first by a humanist group...

"Magic Mirror on the Wall, who is the fairest one of all?" was uttered by the wicked Queen in the 1937 Walt Disney animated movie 'Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.' Do you remember that poignant little snippet from the movie that became a childhood classic for generations? The nation did not necessarily embrace the evil Queen as a hero but some were on the edge of their seats wondering if the truth or the continued lie would ever come out. The question which many have speculated over was whether or not this movie's focus on the dark side of...

This weekend’s feedback is in response to a number of queries about the Church of England (Anglicans) officially apologizing to Darwin. However, they don’t speak for all attenders of this church, since many of them are still faithful to Scripture and are appalled by their ‘leaders’. There are numerous mistakes in the article by the official CoE representative, a Rev. Dr Malcolm Brown, on the official CoE website, and Jonathan Sarfati replies point-by-point...

In 1978, a young scholar in his early 30s named Bill Donohue, working on a book about the ACLU, went to New York City to interview its founder, Roger Baldwin. Donohue asked him why the ACLU was opposed to a moment of silent "meditation" in the classroom. Baldwin responded, "I suppose you could get by with that, but it's a subterfuge, because the implication is that you're meditating about the hereafter, or God, or something."   That revealing moment allowed Donohue to confirm that Baldwin opposed a moment of silent meditation because he feared some student might actually think...

Dead End of Secularism Secularism was to be the wave of the future. Leading secular theorists such as Peter Berger taught that secularism would be the inevitable result of the inexorable march of progress and that its many advantages would simply drive out religion in all of its forms. No serious discussion was possible or necessary. Religion would be deposited unceremoniously on the dustbin of history. But a funny thing happened on the way to the dustbin: secularism has not only failed to triumph over religion, it can’t even reproduce itself. In spite of enormous institutional advantages conferred on it...

French president Nicolas Sarkozy's rejection of the burka and the face veil are "in keeping with the republican spirit of secularism," according to the rector of the Grand Mosque in Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, quoted by media. Boubakeur said he supported a proposal by French MPs for a panel of deputies to look at the wearing of the burka "on the condition that they listen to what the experts on Islam have to say". The burka marked "a return towards Islam's past, in line with the preaching and vision of fundamentalists" added Boubakeur (photo)....

Archbishop Francisco Gil Helin Madrid, Spain, Jun 1, 2009 / 08:39 pm (CNA).- Archbishop Francisco Gil Hellin of Burgos, Spain said last week that it has become increasingly evident that both the Catholic Church and Pope Benedict XVI are confronting the “center of the secular world, made up of significant elements of the European Union, the United Nations, and more recently, the United States.” “This center has shown itself incapable of accepting anything that is not part of its own values. And thus, despite scientific proof, the Pope has been irrationally criticized in the name of reason, and the...

Though President Obama may have irked some Americans when he told the nation of Turkey this week that the United States is not a Christian nation, he might have helped believers in Muslim-dominated areas by saying so. Christians overseas, particularly in the Middle East, are often persecuted under the false pretense that the appearingly immoral and indulgent West is a reflection of Christendom. Now, should anti-Christian Muslims take to heart what Obama said recently, perhaps they’ll see the immoral and indulgent West as a reflection of secularism or even liberalism. “One of the great strengths of the United States is...

Outside of politics, sports, and popular entertainment, how many living Germans, or French, or Austrians, or even Brits can you name? Even well-informed people who love art and literature and who follow developments in science and medicine would be hard pressed to come up with many, more often any, names. In terms of greatness in literature, art, music, the sciences, philosophy, and medical breakthroughs, Europe has virtually fallen off the radar screen. This is particularly meaningful given how different the answer would have been had you asked anyone the same question between just 80 and 120 years ago — and...

Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) said he was “disturbed” by President Barack Obama’s request to have the symbolic name for Jesus Christ – IHS – covered from a pediment that was visible behind him when he spoke at Georgetown University’s Gaston Hall on April 14. “I join many Christians in expressing my outrage at this request,” Fleming said after requesting one minute to speak on the House floor. “This administration has no problem spending money imprinted with the phrase, ‘In God We Trust,’ but won’t have our president speak with any symbol of Christ in public view,” Fleming said. “We begin...