Free Republic

‘Mass Pass’ for the Faithful?ROME (ChurchMilitant.com) - Cardinals close to Pope Francis will soon celebrate a High Mass where the faithful will have to present the Italian health passport in order to attend, an arbitrary requirement that ignores the instructions of the Italian bishops' conference and the guidelines of the government. Cdl. Marcello Semeraro and Msgr. Vincenzo Viva The suburbicarian diocese of Albano, currently led by Cdl. Marcello Semeraro, will celebrate both the episcopal ordination of its new bishop, Msgr. Vincenzo Viva, and the golden priestly jubilee of Cdl. Semeraro on the next Feast of the Nativity of Mary. For...

Twentieth Week in Ordinary Time Matthew 22:1-14 Friends, today’s Gospel likens the kingdom of heaven to a king who gave a wedding feast for his son. Notice that the father (God the Father) is giving a banquet for his son (God the Son), whose bride is the Church. Jesus is the marriage of divinity and humanity—and we his followers are invited to join in the joy of this union. The joyful intimacy of the Father and Son is now offered to us to be shared. Listen to Isaiah to learn the details of this banquet: "On this mountain the Lord...

Rep. Paul Gosar applauded the announcement from OnlyFans which confirmed the site would ban pornography from October on, following his initiation of Congressional pressure against the site in April this year. OnlyFans, where the vast majority of users are women posting sexually explicit videos and images for paying customers, announced that by October that the platform will ban any “sexually-explicit content,” in order to “ensure the long-term sustainability of the platform and to continue to host an inclusive community of creators and fans.” Rep. Paul Gosar, one of the most well-known America First members of Congress, applauded the move from...

This is an open letter to MCPA residents in PDF format at this link: https://recorder.maricopa.gov/pdf/Dear%20Arizona%20Republicans_August%202021.pdf

Chuck Close, a Photorealist painter who earned acclaim for his incisive portraits and more recently faced criticism after multiple women accused him of sexual harassment, has died at 81. Pace Gallery, which represents him, said on Thursday that he had died after a congestive heart failure resulting from a long illness. “I am saddened by the loss of one of my dearest friends and greatest artists of our time,” said Pace chairman Arne Glimcher. “His contributions are inextricable from the achievements of 20th- and 21st-century art.” Close’s large-scale painting of his artist colleagues, celebrities, politicians, and others in his orbit...

With more services than ever collecting your data, it’s easy to start asking why anyone should care about most of it. This is why. Because people start having ideas like this. In a new blog post for the International Monetary Fund, four researchers presented their findings from a working paper that examines the current relationship between finance and tech as well as its potential future. Gazing into their crystal ball, the researchers see the possibility of using the data from your browsing, search, and purchase history to create a more accurate mechanism for determining the credit rating of an individual...

A look at who is running the puppet President from behind the scenes and why conservatives have reasons to be optimistic.

Almost 15 million mail-in ballots were unaccounted for in the 2020 presidential election, and more than a million more ballots were undeliverable, according to a new study. The Public Interest Legal Foundation, a conservative watchdog group on election integrity, released a research brief Wednesday assessing the effect of mass mail-in balloting in an election with a close presidential race in key battleground states such as Arizona, Georgia, and Wisconsin. “These figures detail how the 2020 push to mail voting needs to be a one-year experiment,” J. Christian Adams, president of the Public Interest Legal Foundation, said in a public statement....

Speaking of the hubris of the expert class, Fauci wrote last year that WHO and the U.N. should be empowered to “rebuild the infrastructure of human existence” in order to avoid future pandemics. Considering their repeated record of abject failure, putting the international experts in charge of such an all-encompassing project would probably return us to the caves.

WASHINGTON—An internal State Department memo last month warned top agency officials of the potential collapse of Kabul soon after the U.S.’s Aug. 31 troop withdrawal deadline in Afghanistan, according to a U.S. official and a person familiar with the document. The classified cable represents the clearest evidence yet that the administration had been warned by its own officials on the ground that the Taliban’s advance was imminent and Afghanistan’s military may be unable to stop it. The cable, sent via the State Department’s confidential dissent channel, warned of rapid territorial gains by the Taliban and the subsequent collapse of Afghan...

Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) official Regina Bratton is an unabashed anti-Trumper, pro-masker and Obama and Biden fan, NATIONAL FILE has learned. Bratton’s anti-Trump activism highlights the plague of pro-Democrat subversion in the conservative movement. CPAC’s Regina Bratton said during the 2020 election that Joe Biden was “our last hope” but was disappointed in his choice of Kamala Harris as running mate. Bratton, a black woman, disparaged Kamala Harris because “she’s married to a white dude” and thus “she is not one of us.” At the recent CPAC conference in Dallas, Texas, Regina Bratton reportedly identified herself as the “Executive...

Explanation: Plowing through Earth's atmosphere at 60 kilometers per second, this bright perseid meteor streaks along a starry Milky Way. Captured in dark Portugal skies on August 12, it moves right to left through the frame. Its colorful trail starts near Deneb (alpha Cygni) and ends near Altair (alpha Aquilae), stars of the northern summer triangle. In fact this perseid meteor very briefly outshines both, two of the brightest stars in planet Earth's night. The trail's initial greenish glow is typical of the bright perseid shower meteors. The grains of cosmic sand, swept up dust from periodic comet Swift-Tuttle, are...

Chelsea Clinton's children may be too young to get the coronavirus vaccine, but they're still doing their part to slow the spread of the virus. In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, the former first daughter, 41, opens up about her family's experience amid the COVID-19 pandemic and how her three kids, sons Jasper, 2, and Aidan, 5, plus daughter Charlotte, 6½, are dealing with the turbulent time. "Thankfully my kids understand they have to wear a mask to protect themselves and to protect others. They are very good about washing their hands. They're very good about keeping their distance," she...

The CEO of Fox News sent a memo to staff on Tuesday including several updates to its COVID-19 protocol, one of which required employees to input their vaccination status. Back in June, the news outlet issued a memo encouraging fully vaccinated staff to include their vaccination status into Workday. The memo noted at the time that employees who might be vaccinated but had not provided that information to the company would be considered unvaccinated under their policies.

A woman voter in California posted a video on her Instagram account on Wednesday evening appearing to show that the return envelope for mail-in ballots in the California recall election could reveal a “yes” vote to anyone handling it. Voting is already under way in the Sep. 14 recall election, during which California voters will decide whether Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) will remain in office, or be replaced by one of 46 candidates, led by conservative talk show host Larry Elder. Amy Rose Cox showed how two holes on the envelope, near the signature panel, could show that a voter...

Ok, full disclosure, I’m one of “those people”, the unwashed aka the unvaccinated. Why? Well so far it’s still a free country so I don’t have to take responsibility for the health of a nation or treat my decision as a moral choice, my body, my decision. I’ve been vaccine-ambiguous from the start. My research on an American Thinker article, America Held Hostage showed people weren’t/aren’t dropping like flies, bodies didn’t/don’t litter the streets, and hospitals weren’t/aren’t overwhelmed with COVID patients. And our kids face nearly zero danger from the virus. Thus after seeing the facts, I felt no urgency...

The Obama Foundation has released documents that detail the latest and most comprehensive price tag yet on the upcoming presidential center in Chicago’s Jackson Park: $830 million. The amount will go in three buckets: the $700 million cost of construction, which officially kicked off Monday and is expected to take four years; $90 million for preparing artifacts, exhibits and the center’s opening; and $40 million in the first year of operating costs, according to an annual report and tax return for 2020 released this week. Previously, the bricks-and-mortar costs were estimated to be $500 million and before that, more than...

In a virtual press briefing today, conservative radio host LarryElder responds to Gov. Gavin Newsom's Trump-focused attacks, stating where he agrees and disagrees with the former president.

After a court refused to admit a “hate speech” case against her, a Christian street preacher in the United Kingdom says she's suing the police for arresting her on the false accusation that she threatened to stab gays and non-believers while she was preaching outside a tube station. A judge ruled this week that there was no case to answer as the words of Hazel Lewis, a 49-year-old preacher who was arrested under the Public Order Act while preaching outside Finsbury Park tube station in North London last February, had not been threatening or abusive(snip) Lewis said she is now...

US troops in Syria Stephanopoulos asked about a possible al Qaeda terror threat to the US as a result of the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Biden said, "Al Qaeda, ISIS, they metastasize." He then argued that the US faces a "significantly greater" terror threat from Syria and East Africa than it does from Afghanistan. Biden continued with regard to Afghanistan: "And we have maintained the ability to have an over-the-horizon capability to take them out. We're -- we don't have military in Syria to make sure that we're going to be protected..." Facts First: Depending on Biden's meaning, his remark about...