Free Republic

It’s election season, and I’ve hesitated to say much on the subject for many reasons. One of those reasons is because our obsession with politics is unhealthy and unholy (in that it reflects our fixation on this life rather than the next, and on worldly power instead of true discipleship). Another is that this election season has been like watching a slow-burning dumpster fire. I don’t plan to tell you how to vote, but I do want to establish a few basic principles: No well-formed Catholic should feel comfortable with Trump or Clinton; Thus, voters face a difficult decision this...

American Catholic voters lean strongly toward Hillary Clinton in this year's presidential contest, according to a new Pew Forum survey. The Pew poll found that Clinton held a 56-39% advantage over Donald Trump among Catholic voters. That 17% margin was markedly different from the results of a similar poll in the last presidential race, when then-Senator Barack Obama was virtually even with Mitt Romney among Catholic voters in June 2012. However, Clinton's margin among Catholic voters was entirely attributable to a huge (77-16%) advantage among Hispanic Catholics. Among white Catholics, Trump had a slight (50-46) edge. Among all voters surveyed,...

In a strongly worded statement, the chairman of the Committee on Migration of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has denounced Thursday’s Supreme Court decision that blocked the Obama administration’s executive action to shield more than 4 million illegal immigrants from deportation, calling it a “huge disappointment.”

On 2 May, the Lepanto Institute published an article titled, CRS: A Tale of Two Letters. In this article, the Lepanto Institute raised grave concerns over a joint letter signed by the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) and Catholic Relief Services (CRS), because the letter requested that Congress provide vast amounts of money to two agencies (USAID and PEPFAR) which are committed to the distribution of abortifacient contraception and condoms. What follows is an analysis of the responses received from two USCCB officials which directly admit that our concerns are real, but then deny that there is any problem.

It appears that the Catholic Relief Services hasn't learned anything from its Rick Estridge and Tony Spence debacles. Maybe it's because they never considered these two dissidents to be problematic for their mission. Of course that might be saying something about the anti-Catholic nature of their real mission. Lepanto Institute has unearthed yet another enabler of mortal sin within the ranks of CRS. His name is Michael Wynne, a systems analyst for CRS. All indications from his social media accounts point to him supporting same-sex #mowwidge and being in a sodomite situation himself. CRS is under the control of the...

I’ve often found myself wondering about the bias I see at the Catholic News Service(CNS), which seems to gloss over many of the serious problems in the Church. Today, my friend Michael Hichborn at the Lepanto Institute has a story on CNS Director and Editor in Chief Tony Spence that may help shed some light on the bias of the USCCB’s official news and information service: Tony Spence has been the head of the Catholic News Service since 2004.  Over the last few weeks, Spence has been publishing statements on his own twitter feed, identifying him as the head of CNS, speaking...

People observe a minute of silence at the Trocadero in Paris Nov. 16. (CNS photo/Philippe Wojazer, Reuters) Of all the commentaries on the Paris massacres I’ve read, the one that seems most perceptive is a piece by Judith Bergman for the Gatestone Institute titled “How Can Anyone Be Shocked?” Indeed. The attacks had all the inevitability of a Greek tragedy: they were entirely predictable. Nevertheless many reacted with “shock,” including Angela Merkel, David Cameron, and the Vatican. As Bergman writes: After 9/11 in the United States; the 2004 Madrid train bombings, which killed nearly 200 and wounded 2,000; and...

Aqua regia ("the king's water") is a mixture of acids which dissolves gold. It does one heck of a job: A useful short history of the king's water can be found here. Since 1965, Catholicism has had its own version of aqua regia, and the Church has been guzzling it. It's called ecumenism, but it has gone well beyond rational discussion to a positive hysteria--ecumania, if you will. And it appears to have made ecumaniacs of the USCCB, what with their recommendation for expanded intercommunion. Sounds positively ecumaniacal, in fact. A better dissolver of Catholic teaching you will not find....

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is appealing to the U.S. government to take in 100,000 Syrian refugees by the end of the year, along with an additional 100,000 from other countries. The population of Syrian refugees is overwhelmingly Muslim. In a message distributed via email, the USCCB is encouraging Catholics to submit a letter to their congressional representatives as well as to President Obama urging the government to "protect the lives and dignity of people in Syria, Iraq and in other countries suffering war, persecution and poverty." According to the pre-transcribed letter this is to be accomplished by...

Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer was the keynote speaker at the annual convocation of the North American Lutheran Church, Dallas, Texas, August 13, 2015. He spoke about Muslim persecution of Christians. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops pulled their representative from the North American Lutheran Church convocation when they found out Spencer was the keynote speaker. Watch this speech and see what the Catholic Bishops of the United States don't want you to know.

You know, there are times when I wish the real world were less like satire. I wrote the following fictional news piece as a joke with a friend, a fellow journalist, on Facebook as we were anticipating (still waiting, by the way) the official response from the USCCB on the ongoing revelations of the Planned Parenthood videos. The appalling ghastliness of the videos revealing the world’s largest abortionist organisation’s baby-parts business, I felt, made the usual bland, boilerplate, bishopspeak rhetoric seem even more absurd and outrageous than usual. We were having a good (though somewhat grim) laugh, lowering, en-blanding and...

Today Archbishop Kurtz issued a statement about the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling, calling it a “tragic error that harms the common good and most vulnerable among us.” Read the full statement here. Archbishop Kurtz compared the decision to Roe v. Wade and how it doesn’t change the truth- which is “unchanged and unchangeable.” He continues on to say that, “Neither decision is rooted in the truth, and as a result, both will eventually fail. Today the Court is wrong again. It is profoundly immoral and unjust for the government to declare that two people of the same sex can constitute...

From the USCCB: WASHINGTON—The U.S. Supreme Court decision, June 26, interpreting the U.S. Constitution to require all states to license and recognize same-sex “marriage” “is a tragic error that harms the common good and most vulnerable among us,” said Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).The full statement follows:Regardless of what a narrow majority of the Supreme Court may declare at this moment in history, the nature of the human person and marriage remains unchanged and unchangeable. Just as Roe v. Wade did not settle the question of abortion over forty...

WASHINGTON—The U.S. Supreme Court decision, June 26, interpreting the U.S. Constitution to require all states to license and recognize same-sex “marriage” “is a tragic error that harms the common good and most vulnerable among us,” said Archbishop Joseph E. Kurtz of Louisville, Kentucky, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). The full statement follows: Regardless of what a narrow majority of the Supreme Court may declare at this moment in history, the nature of the human person and marriage remains unchanged and unchangeable. Just as Roe v. Wade did not settle the question of abortion over forty years...

BALTIMORE, MD, May 19, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- Breaking a month of silence on the scandal created by one of its high-level executives living in a homosexual “marriage,” the head of Catholic Relief Services (CRS) said the organization has yet to decide whether it should employ someone who violates Church teaching in this manner. The US Bishops’ international relief agency is working on it, CRS President and CEO Carolyn Woo told Aleteia’s John Burger in an interview published May 18. “CRS has a senior person who is in a civil gay marriage,” Woo said, “and the question is, ‘Is that a...

Update April 20: In keeping with our regular practice, we contacted Catholic Relief Services on Friday morning for a response prior to publication, and gave them a deadline of 4pm. In this case they did not respond. However, by Monday morning, Estridge's LinkedIn and Facebook profiles were taken down.BALTIMORE, MD, April 20, 2015 (LifeSiteNews.com) -- As Catholic bishops throughout the U.S. face attacks for requiring Catholic teachers not to support same-sex “marriage,” new evidence shows that a vice-president at the bishops’ own foreign relief agency is himself “married” to another man.Critics say the news confirms Catholic Relief Services’ history of...

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit on Apr. 6 against the federal government to obtain “documents related to how groups that are awarded government funding contracts are restricting refugee and undocumented immigrant teenagers’ access to reproductive health services, including contraception and abortion.” The lawsuit is seeking the release of documents from the Health and Human Services Administration for Children and Families about contracts awarded to religious groups that are helping unaccompanied minors, many of whom have crossed into the United States from Mexico. Brigitte Amiri, an ACLU senior staff attorney, said that...

The pro-abortion American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is suing the Obama administration for documents it says will show that the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) is restricting access to abortions for unaccompanied immigrant children.In February 2014, the USCCB objected to a new regulation proposed by the Obama administration that would require contractors to provide access to contraception and abortion for unaccompanied immigrant children who have been raped.  In an official letter, the USCCB as well as World Relief, the National Association of Evangelicals and Catholic Relief Services, explained that the new regulation violates religious liberty, specifically the federal...

Seminarians lead a procession for Mass during the dedication of a new building at the Pontifical North American College in Rome Jan. 6. (CNS photo/Paul Haring) Yesterday the USCCB released some information about men to be ordained priests this year. On average, the report states, the men were 17 years old when they first considered the vocation of priesthood, and 71% said they were encouraged in that regard by a parish priest, "as well as friends (46 percent), parishioners (45 percent), and mothers (40 percent)." And the number of men to be ordained is up 20% from last year:...

WASHINGTON – For years, top Catholic bishops have argued for stronger federal oversight of the Internet superhighway. The alternative is intolerable, they said; big cable companies will force noncommercial religious speakers to pay more or assign them to slower lanes. On Thursday, the bishops saw their dream move one step closer to reality after the Federal Communications Commission voted for strict network neutrality or “open Internet” rules. Bishop John C. Wester, chairman of the communications committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), endorsed the FCC’s approval in a statement.  “From the inception of the Internet until the...