Free Republic

On the 15th anniversary of Summorum Pontificum: “What we oppose to Traditionis custodes is not ‘non possumus’ but ‘non licet’: it is not permitted!” — Jean Madiran in defense of traditionalism With July 7, 2022 we reach the fifteenth anniversary of Pope Benedict’s motu proprio and come close to the first anniversary of Pope Francis’s attempt to cancel out its provisions in his own motu proprio. On this occasion Rorate publishes a translation of the following article by Rémi Fontaine (original here), based on three earlier articles at Le Salon beige on November 5, 2021, March 31, and June...

Grassroots non-profit Reclaim Idaho delivered around 100,000 signatures to the Idaho Secretary of State's office to get their Quality Education Act on the November ballot. Individual counties have already verified these signatures, according to Reclaim Idaho Co-Founder Luke Mayville. The Secretary of State's office will review, and confirm, the petition before the Quality Education Act official makes the ballot. The Quality Education Act aims to collect $323,526,400 annually for Idaho public schools. The initiative would create a new tax bracket for any person earning more than 250-thousand dollars a year, or a married couple earning more than half-a-million dollars. Each...

James Caan, the curly-haired tough guy known to movie fans as the hotheaded Sonny Corleone of “The Godfather” and to television audiences as both the dying football player in the classic weeper “Brian’s Song” and the casino boss in “Las Vegas,” has died. He was 82.

Disneyland's social media accounts have been hacked by a self-proclaimed 'super hacker' who made racists posts in an effort to seek 'revenge' on the theme park. The hacker, who identified himself as David Do, took over the park's Instagram and Facebook accounts early Thursday morning, making a slew of derogatory posts threatening black people. He made multiple posts featuring the n-word, claimed to have invented COVID-19 and alleged he was working on a new COVID20 virus. He also revealed the attack was in revenge of Disney staff who mocked him 'for having a small penis.' Disney deleted the posts from...

What does it mean to reject Vatican II?The Second Vatican Council (1962-65) was a unique ecumenical council. The previous twenty were assembled to address particular doctrinal or ecclesial crises, while John XXIII called Vatican II to layout a new pastoral program for engaging the modern world. It was not a particular crisis but a general one, focused on finding a new way of conveying the Christian life in the modern world.In the aftermath of the Council, both progressive and traditional wings viewed it as revolutionary, a sharp break from the previous practice of the Church. It did not help that...

I find myself thinking a lot lately about the deficit of imagination among people who consider themselves savvy and sophisticated. Here’s what I mean: Let’s say you work for a prestigious company or organization that professes to care about a certain set of values: open-mindedness, curiosity, excellence, hard work. And let’s say you watch as a colleague, previously held up as a paragon of those values, is ostracized and smeared for a thought crime that was not considered a thought crime until about five minutes ago. Maybe he made a bad joke. Or maybe he used the phrase “guys” instead...

BALTIMORE (AP) — A man was shot and killed after he swung a baseball bat at a person who cleans windshields at intersections for cash, Baltimore’s police commissioner said Thursday.The 48-year-old man who was shot was driving through an intersection near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor in the afternoon when he encountered so-called squeegee workers and had a heated interaction, Commissioner Michael Harrison told reporters.Squeegee workers, also known as squeegee kids, consist mostly of teens from low-income neighborhoods who clean drivers’ windshields at intersections in exchange for money. Some drivers in Baltimore have complained about them.The man drove through the intersection, parked...

Incredible how these guys at Dragnet summed up the problem..... https://youtu.be/FZo2hhvvlpw

Former Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo collapsed in the western city of Nara at around 11: 30 a.m. Abe was making a speech on the street. An NHK reporter says Abe was bleeding. The reporter heard what sounded like a gun going off. Former Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo collapsed during a speech in the city of Nara, in western Japan. Initial reports say he may have been injured. An NHK reporter on site heard something that sounded like a gunshot, and saw Abe bleeding.

Many voters still believe cheating affected the 2020 presidential election, and a majority fear the upcoming midterm elections could be tainted by cheating. A new national telephone and online survey by Rasmussen Reports and The National Pulse finds that 52% of Likely U.S. voters believe it is at least somewhat likely that cheating affected the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, including 36% who think it is Very Likely. ... Fifty percent (50%) of voters think it is at least somewhat likely there will be widespread cheating that will affect the outcome of this fall’s congressional elections, including 24% who...

President Joe Biden’s administration sold 950,000 barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve to a Chinese state-owned gas company that has financial ties to a private equity firm cofounded by Hunter Biden, according to a Washington Free Beacon report. In April, Biden’s Department of Energy announced the nearly one million barrel sale to Unipec, which is the trading arm of Sinopec. Sinopec is wholly owned and operated by the Chinese Communist Party. Unipec reportedly purchases oil across the globe and then apparently sells it through its Sinopec Marketing subsidiary. According to Unipec’s LinkedIn page: UNIPEC America, Inc. is...

State legislative incumbents are losing to primary challengers at an increased rate this year compared to 2020. Across the 26 states that have held primaries so far, 132 incumbents—27 Democrats and 105 Republicans—have lost. This represents a 65% increase from 2020 among these states. This increase has been driven by Republican losses, which are up 98% from 53 in 2020. For Democrats, the number defeated this year remains the same. In total, 5.0% of incumbents running for re-election in 2022 have lost, up from defeat rates ranging from 2.4% to 3.4% since 2014. At least one state legislative incumbent has...

he pair of suspects arrested for allegedly plotting to “shoot up” a Fourth of July celebration in Richmond, Virginia — thwarted by an American citizen — are illegal aliens, court records state. On Wednesday, as Breitbart News reported, the Richmond Police Department announced the arrests of Guatemalan nationals 52-year-old illegal alien Julio Alvardo Dubon and 38-year-old illegal alien Rolman Balacarcel Ac for allegedly plotting a mass shooting at the city’s July 4th celebration. According to Police Chief Gerald Smith, Dubon and Ac’s plan was thwarted thanks to an American “hero citizen” who overheard a conversation about the plot and subsequently...

100% MADE IN AMERICA!🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 LET’S TAKE OUR COUNTRY BACK!

The Nebraska Republican Party has decided to bar Matt Innis of Crete, an outspoken Donald Trump supporter who has been sharply critical of Gov. Pete Ricketts, from its state convention in Kearney this weekend. The decision has stirred traffic on Facebook and within GOP circles. Innis, a former Lancaster County Republican chairman who unsuccessfully challenged Sen. Ben Sasse in the 2020 GOP primary election and supported Charles Herbster in this year's Republican gubernatorial primary election, has aimed a steady stream of criticism at Ricketts on his Facebook page. Jim Pillen of Columbus, who won the GOP gubernatorial nomination in May,...

LANSING, Mich. — A ballot initiative that aims to solidify reproductive rights, including the right to abortion, in the Michigan Constitution could have more than enough signatures to get on the ballot come November. In fact, the volunteers who helped gather signatures estimate they could have double the required number of signatures. “We have absolutely exceeded the goal," said Gina Keller the co-founder of Distill Social, a grassroots organization in Michigan that helped gather signatures for the Reproductive Freedom for All petition. The petition would amend the state constitution to include the right to an abortion, birth control and other...

A volley of policy proposals has been put up for debate at the annual conference of the nation’s largest teacher’s union, including one that called for the organization to support making masks and COVID-19 vaccines mandatory in public schools. About 6,000 delegates of the National Education Association (NEA), who collectively represent more than 3 million employees in public education, convened in Chicago from July 3–6. It’s the first time they’ve assembled in person to debate on issues and set policy agenda since the start of the pandemic. Prior to 2022, anyone could use the NEA website to track the status...

Over the last week, we have been barraged with stories about a 10-year-old rape victim in Ohio who was unable to obtain an abortion in that state and had to cross the line into Indiana to terminate her pregnancy. If you Google “10 year old abortion Ohio,” you get 33,100,000 results. The story is everywhere, internationally. But did it happen? It turns out that the story originated with an abortionist who is also a media figure, seemingly working full-time to promote abortion. And if a 9 or 10 year old was raped, it was a heinous crime. Where is the...

(CP) Finnish lawmaker Päivi Räsänen, prosecuted for voicing her traditional Christian beliefs about marriage and sexuality, believes that a "heavy hatred for Christian values" in Western society will cause many Christians to censor themselves for social acceptance. The former interior minister who has served in Finnish Parliament for nearly three decades was one of several global political figures to speak at the annual International Religious Freedom Summit in Washington, D.C., this week. The event aims to increase "the public awareness and political strength for the international religious freedom movement. The summit is led by former Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom...

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has posted images Thursday of him meeting U.S. Senators Lindsey Graham and Richard Blumenthal in Kyiv, saying that his country continues to "count on the support of Congress" for weaponry in its fight against Russia.