Free Republic

Good Friday Gaslighting It has been twenty years since release of the movie, The Passion of the Christ, produced, directed and co-written by Mel Gibson. The film is the highest grossing Christian film of all time (inflation adjusted) as well as the highest grossing independent film of all time. As of 2023, it was also the highest grossing R rated film domestically, receiving an R rating due to its graphic depiction of the Passion of the Christ. But before all the glory of its ultimate success and triumph, this film had its own passion to suffer and overcome at the...

Silence in the Face of the Homosexual Infestation of the ClergyAs long as active clergy homosexual activity persists, the Church will continue to fracture and split, where eventually it will all but collapse and disappear.I saw the full-moon-sized face and squinted. I stared at his image for several seconds. Yes; it was him. In the closing frame of Bishop Joseph Strickland’s 2018 USCCB plenary assembly testimony and rebuke to bishops for their concealment of homosexual predator Theodore McCarrick sat a clergy member below the dais, facing the sea of bishops. He is seen below the dais as Bishop Strickland returns...

[Catholic Caucus] Bishop Strickland to lead Rosary rally outside US Catholic bishops’ meeting this WednesdayBALTIMORE (LifeSiteNews) — Bishop Joseph Strickland, whom Pope Francis removed from his diocese over the weekend, will lead a Rosary rally this week in Baltimore as the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) conducts its meetings for its biannual plenary session. READ: Bishop Strickland: I was removed because forces in the Church want to change the teaching of Jesus At noon on Wednesday, November 15, Bishop Strickland will recite the Rosary publicly at the plaza on the waterfront side of the Marriott Waterfront Hotel Inner...

Illegal Immigration and the Catholic Church: Follow the MoneyThe love of money is the root of all evils. (1 Timothy 6:10) The open border and uncontrolled influx of millions of people have devastating consequences. It is a true crisis. Over the last two-and-a-half years, over 7 million illegal immigrants have entered the United States. That number does not include those who escaped detection and are not in any official counts. By the end of 2024, it is projected that well over ten percent of the population will be here illegally. The results of President Biden’s decision not to enforce border...

[Catholic Caucus] “Thou Shalt Not Kneel”: Guest Article by Leo DarrochBackground to this guest article: As LifeSiteNews reported on October 7, 2023: “A Catholic family of eight was recently denied Holy Communion while kneeling while attending Mass at a church in the Diocese of Boise. Both the local priest and bishop refused to acknowledge that the denial of the sacrament was a grave violation of canon law. Scott Smith, a Catholic attorney, author, theologian, and father of six, was on vacation with his family in Idaho in August and went to Sunday Mass at St. Charles Borromeo in Hailey. ‘After...

To Protect God’s Creation, Seek Personal and Policy Change, U.S. Bishops SayPope Francis established the World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation in 2015.Just as Christians have been restored to God’s kingdom through baptism, they must seek to rightly order their relationships and society to God’s creation, the U.S. bishops said in an environmental reflection ahead of the Sept. 1 World Day of Prayer for the Care of Creation.“We must change! Pope Francis invites us to ‘transform our hearts, our lifestyles, and the public policies [to] contribute to the mighty river of justice and peace in this...

Synodality and the Messy Separation of the North American Bishops from the Catholic Church“A word that frequently surfaced during the team’s discernment at the retreat was ‘messiness.’ Synodality is not always easy to comprehend; it can also be seen to be a complicated process.” (Final North American Synodal Document)On April 12, 2023, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops jointly issued their Synodal Document: On North American Final Document for the Continental Stage of the 2021-2024 Synod: For a Synodal Church: Communion, Participation, and Mission. Like the other Synodal documents we have seen, the North...

Bp. Strickland urges Vatican to refute Biden’s claim that Pope doesn’t oppose taxpayer-funded abortions'Mr Biden can’t be allowed to twist the words of Pope Francis in this way,' the Bishop of Tyler wrote on Twitter. Bishop Joseph Strickland called on the Vatican to deny President Joe Biden’s claim that Pope Francis does not support the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops’ (USCCB) call for a halt to taxpayer-funded abortions. “Mr Biden can’t be allowed to twist the words of Pope Francis in this way,” Stickland wrote on Twitter. “I implore the Vatican press office to emphatically clarify that Pope Francis...

US bishops conference resoundingly silent after Biden signs same-sex ‘marriage’ lawThe U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued statements before and after the Senate passed the Respect for Marriage Act, but has said nothing since the self-proclaimed Catholic president signed it into law.WASHINGTON, D.C. (LifeSiteNews) — While the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) issued a statement of condemnation both before and after the Senate’s passage of the so-called “Respect for Marriage Act” (RMA), which enshrines “same-sex marriage” into federal law, no such condemnation has been forthcoming since President Joe Biden signed the bill into law on Dec. 13.LifeSiteNews reached out...

America’s Catholic Bishops Made Back All $3 Billion in Sex Abuse Settlements by Trafficking Illegal Immigrants at Taxpayer ExpenseDoes this explain their open borders fanaticism?One of the creepy ironies of abortion is that the U.S. has imported, in sheer numbers, virtually one immigrant for every American child aborted since 1973. (That is, around 1 million per year.) It’s almost as if our country and its economy needed those people, and after it shipped them to medical waste dumpsters, it had to go find them in foreign countries — stripping entire cities and their families of fathers. Likewise, as Gateway Pundit...

Catholic Charities Is Not Exempt from Unemployment Compensation Statute In Catholic Charities Bureau, Inc. v. State of Wisconsin Labor and Industry Review Commission, (WI App., Dec. 13, 2022), a Wisconsin state appellate court held that Catholic Charities and its sub-entities are not exempt from the Wisconsin Unemployment Compensation Act as organizations "operated primarily for religious purposes." It emphasized that the statute should be "liberally construed to effect unemployment compensation coverage for workers who are economically dependent upon others in respect to their wage-earning status." The court said that it must look to the work of Catholic Charities, not the...

Is Catholic Charities Helping Turn America Blue?The Heritage Foundation recently issued a shocking report tracking cell phone data originating from non-governmental agencies helping to relocate illegal immigrates to various locations across our nation. The report shows that 71% of tracked cell phones end-up in Republican Congressional districts.Catholic Charities is one of the organizations specifically singled-out by Heritage in its analysis. In phase four of its investigation, Heritage focused on geofencing Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley, located in San Juan, Texas. Nearly 3,400 unique mobile devices were identified as being on-premises. These devices were later tracked to 433 congressional...

Are U.S. Bishops Complicit in the Trafficking and Exploitation of Migrant Children?The Catholic Church is one of the largest recipients of government grants and contracts for immigration-related activities in America. The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which lobbies the government for ever-expanding migrant programs, received over $67 million in migrant-related funding in 2021, it’s second largest source of revenue that year. Likewise, the USCCB spent $69 million to provide “migration refugee services,” a figure representing 40% of the organization’s operating expenditures. These facts beg the simple question:Is the USCCB is a religious organization whose mission is the salvation...

The Problem With the US Bishops Christopher Manion points to a few historical problems with the US Bishops (and the USCC bureaucracy as a whole)....Today, [the Bishops'] agenda features a vast array of government programs and policies as the authoritative teaching of “the Church,” while they fall silent on the magisterial teachings of Humanae Vitae on contraception, Romans 1:26-27 on sodomy, and Matthew 19:3-6 on marriage and divorce....That 'vast array of government programs and policies' is translated "Distributive Justice." That's the claim, anyway: that the 'distributive justice' portion of 'social justice' is served by Federal programs. (You'll recall that 'distributive...

Report: US Catholic Bishops Gave $3.4 Million to Organizations Involved in Abortion, LGBTQ, Activism and Socialism Washington, DC – The Lepanto Institute published a highly detailed report profiling sixty-six organizations receiving funding from the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD, the official anti-poverty program of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB). The report indicates in its findings that 30.8% of the CCHD’s granted organizations for FY 2020-2021 are in violation of CCHD grant guidelines and Catholic moral and social teaching. Of the total $11,249,000 distributed by the CCHD that year, $3,430,000 went to organizations promoting abortion, contraception, LGBTQ...

America’s Grave Sensus Fidei-less OpinionsIn private conversations, off-the-record interviews, and moments of candor, Catholic journalists have known what German Cardinal Gerhard Müller recently revealed in plain sight when discussing the Synod on Synodality on EWTN’s The World Over television program: Our Lady’s prophecy to Sr. Agnes Sasagawa in her apparition at Akita, Japan, a half-century ago is now an irremovable part of the ecclesial landscape: The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against other bishops.Of course, the first half of Mary’s prophesy has been...

USCCB Drops Opposition to Catholic Agencies Serving Single LGBTQ Foster ParentsIn an unprecedented move, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has granted an exception for an unmarried lesbian applicant to serve as a foster parent through a program administered by a Catholic organization. After months of litigation, the Conference has stated that it no longer has a religious objection to housing foster children in single-parent lesbian or gay households, according to Baptist News Global.In March 2021, Kelly Easter, a Nashville-area realtor, applied to foster an unaccompanied child seeking asylum in the United States through the federal Department of Health...

The Silence of Pope Francis, Bishops Undermines the Pro-Life MovementEditor’s note: in light of yesterday’s tacit approval to pro-abortion Catholic Nancy Pelosi given by the Roman Pontiff in the midst of his silence regarding the Dobbs decision, we publish this important perspective from Mr. John Smeaton, reflecting on the United States Pro-Life achievement from England. The next step for the US pro-life movementThe American pro-life movement has achieved something which is magnificent to the point of being miraculous. The significance of the Supreme Court’s decision to reverse their decision on Roe v Wade is the fact that, amongst other things,...

[Catholic Caucus] Altar boys who testified at a priest’s trial say bishop (Hubbard) also abused themTwo brothers allege that Gary Mercure, a former priest convicted of raping boys in Massachusetts, had sexually abused them with former Albany bishopQUEENSBURY — Two brothers who grew up in Warren County in a devout Catholic family allege that Gary Mercure, a former priest in their childhood parish who was later convicted of raping young boys in Massachusetts, had sexually abused them on multiple occasions over a period of years and that ex-Albany Bishop Howard J. Hubbard took part in some of the assaults.In a...

“This is a historic day in the life of our country,” reads a statement from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, in response to the decision by the US Supreme Court to overturn controversial rulings on abortion that had effectively permitted abortion on demand throughout the country. On Friday, the Court released its decision in the case of Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization, ruling that the US Constitution does not protect a so-called “right” to abortion. Friday’s ruling, which was decided by six judges in favour and three opposed, overturns the decisions in the landmark abortion cases Roe...