Free Republic

The Limits of DialogueWhy Francis has been so tough on traditionalistsIn December Rome’s Congregation for Divine Worship responded to queries from bishops about Pope Francis’s new restrictions on the pre-Vatican II liturgy. The fury and contempt that greeted this response were to be expected—more of the same that followed Traditionis custodes, the motu proprio in which those restrictions were announced last July. But this time the familiar objections from traditionalists found an echo of sorts among some more liberal-minded Catholics.The Thomas Merton scholar and Bellarmine University theologian Greg Hillis, for example, wrote in America about the apparent contradiction between the...

Lincoln Project founder Rick Wilson said Friday on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” that the Republican Party wanted the 2024 presidential election to be the last election in America. Wilson said, “They’re trying to throw so much friction into voting and all the sand into the machine, especially in communities they don’t feel will be reliable voters for them. So they are not going to bitch and moan about early voting in a red county. ”

Places with highest daily reported cases per capita Seven-day average of daily new reported cases per 100,000 residents

DANVILLE, Pa. (AP) — A truck carrying about 100 monkeys was involved in a crash Friday in Pennsylvania, state police said as authorities searched for at least three of the monkeys that appeared to have escaped the vehicle. The truck carrying the animals crashed with a dump truck in the afternoon in Montour County, Pennsylvania State Police Trooper Andrea Pelachick told the Daily Item. The truck had been on its way to a lab, Pelachick said. Authorities have asked residents who might see the monkeys to call state police at 570-524-2662. It was unclear if any people or animals were...

Reported Cases: The current 7-day moving average of daily new cases (744,616) decreased 5.0% compared with the previous week. (peaked Nationally on 13 Jan) Variants: Omicron 99.5%, and Delta 0.5% New Hospital Admissions: The current 7-day daily average was 20,990. This is a 1.1% increase from the prior week. (peaked Nationally on 15 Jan) Deaths: The current 7-day moving average of new deaths (1,749) has decreased 0.3% compared with the previous week. Vaccinations: 75.3% of the U.S. population has received at least one dose. 63.2% of the U.S. population has been fully vaccinated. (87.3% of Adults have at one, 73.8%...

French President Emmanuel Macron called on Wednesday for abortion to be added to the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. Speaking to members of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, eastern France, on Jan. 19, Macron said that the rights charter, ratified in the year 2000, needed to be revised. “Twenty years after the proclamation of our Charter of Fundamental Rights, which enshrined, among other things, the abolition of the death penalty throughout the Union, I hope that we will be able to update it, in particular to be more explicit about environmental protection or the recognition of the right to abortion,”...

The Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations now has a news program released in multiple languages on YouTube. The Orthodox View is released on Tuesdays and Thursdays in five languages: English, Russian, Serbian, Arabic, and Greek, reports the DECR. The program aims to answer several key questions: How does the Christian worldview influence the world? How are religion, culture and society connected? What’s going on in Christendom and what’s the difference between Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism?

Lincoln Project founder Rick Wilson said Friday on MSNBC’s “The ReidOut” that the Republican Party was building a “dystopian, bizarre authoritarian police state.” When asked about a proposal by Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) to create a police force to investigate election fraud, Wilson said, “Look, if Ron DeSantis forms his own election police force, he needs to start in the Villages, a Republican hotbed, where the only cases of voter fraud in the 2020 election in Florida came from. They were all Republicans. They were all Trump supporters. But I’m going to promise you if he does get his way...

One Covid shot to rule them all, one Covid shot to find them, one Covid shot to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.

The article was part of the periodical’s Jan. 15 edition, but was published online Jan. 13.ROME — Almost 60 organizations have criticized an article supporting the passing of an Italian bill to legalize assisted suicide, which was published last week in the Catholic, Jesuit-run journal La Civiltà Cattolica. A group of 57 associations, mostly based in Italy, have signed a statement voicing their opposition to the article, titled “The Parliamentarian Discussion on ‘Assisted Suicide.’”The article was part of the periodical’s Jan. 15 edition, but published online on Jan. 13. La Civiltà Cattolica, founded in 1850 and published twice a month,...

He wrote this song in 1955 and the record was released in 1956. A classic of the fifties doo-wop genre.

We got a story coming out next week, a follow-up to our Fauci story on Covid, and man, this one involves children,” he said. “You won’t want to miss this.” Just when we thought nothing we could learn about Fauci would shock us after learning of scandal after scandal that the bureaucrat has brought upon himself, it’s hard to fathom even worse things coming out. But something tells me this new revelation is going to be a blockbuster. “You won’t want to miss kids… I can’t say more,” he continued. “But parents are going to be outraged, and of all...

***** Tunes For Our Troops ~ The Freeper Canteen Music Dedication Presents: Remembering Meatloaf! ~ *****~ Support The Artists You Hear Throughout The Canteen ! ~ ***** Warning: Not all music may be appropriate for children! Please click with caution. Thank you! Tunes For The Troops This music is provided for the entertainment of our Troops, Veterans, Allies & their families! Enjoy the variety of musical selections that the Canteen DJs provide throughout the thread. Please ping any DJ with your requests for the Troops! All music is removed on Monday.Thanks to all the DJs for their time &...

Father Peter Williams says the Diocese of Burlington is trying to remove him as pastor of his parish because he will neither be tested regularly for COVID-19 nor be masked. He is asking his parishioners to testify on his behalf, because he says the diocese, and his family, are trying to prove that he is physically and mentally unfit for the job. The priest, who is not vaccinated against COVID-19, is pastor of Holy Family parish in Springfield, Vermont, 120 miles southeast of Burlington. “Being more of the ilk of a patriot and being one who is in support of...

The U.K. Health and Security Agency (UKHSA) announced Friday it is investigating a sub-lineage of the omicron coronavirus variant—known as BA.2 and nicknamed by some scientists as “stealth omicron”—that appears to be outpacing other forms of the variant around the world and is raising fears of an even more transmissible strain of the virus. KEY FACTS In a statement Friday, the UKHSA said it has designated BA.2 a “variant under investigation,” the agency told Forbes, confirming news reports and a since-deleted tweet from the agency. Just 53 samples of BA.2 have been identified in the U.K. by January 10, it...

The plane was forced to reverse course mid-flight on Thursday due to a positive COVID-19 case on board the aircraft that was headed for the Pacific nation in the aftermath of Saturday's volcanic eruption and tsunami which devastated the country. Since Tonga is COVID-19 free, it has required delivery of aid to the island nation of about 105,000 to be contactless in order to keep the coronavirus out.

Transcript: Ngaire Woods*: The good news is that the elite across the world trust each other more and more, so we can come together and design and do beautiful things together. The bad news is that in every single country they were polling the majority of people they were polling trusted that elite less. So we can lead, but ....

The comments, which the president and White House sought to clarify amid backlash, served as a signal to Russia that it was okay to “take some” of Ukraine, McConnell said on Thursday. “I hope Vladimir Putin doesn’t misunderstand the message: No incursion into Ukraine is acceptable,” McConnell said during an appearance on Fox News’ “Special Report.”

Theme #3: “The Collapse of Western Civilization is Imminent”Russia pushes the false claim that Western civilization is collapsing and has strayed from “traditional values” because it works to ensure the safety and equality of LGBTQI+ people and promotes concepts such as female equality and multiculturalism. The demise of Western civilization is one of Russia’s oldest disinformation tropes, with claims of “the decaying west” documented since the 19th century.This “values”-based disinformation narrative evokes ill-defined concepts including “tradition,” “family values,” and “spirituality.” Russia argues it is the bastion of so-called “traditional values” and gender roles and serves as a moral counterweight to...

The University Park neighborhood of Los Angeles has a lot in common with urban areas across the US: A dense population with lots of businesses and housing. A cluster of car dealerships. A row of restaurants. Schools and a community center. But nestled in the predominantly Latino community is something rarely found in urban areas outside California: an oil field.