Free Republic

[Catholic Caucus] Morocco cardinal: ‘We must abandon the false paradigm of true religion, false religion’CWN Editor's Note: In a reflection for the 60th anniversary of Nostra Aetate, the archbishop of Rabat, Morocco, said that “we must abandon the false paradigm of ‘true religion, false religion.’” “Religions, for their part, have the responsibility to offer paths of meaning and truth, not of domination,” said Spanish-born Cardinal Cristóbal López Romero, SDB. “No religion can appropriate the truth, as if it were its sole owner. No one possesses the truth; if anything, it is the truth that possesses us all, and in every...

Once communism kicks in, there's no way out. Sure, communism has always failed and will ultimately fail in New York City, but one should expect early “funded” success. The market factors that trigger capital flight take time. Wealthy people and corporations take time to relocate to more tax-friendly environments. It takes time to sell whatever real estate assets one may possess in “the City.” With increased supply and a depressed forecast for investment, many will either hold their asset(s) or take the loss. Either option delays the inevitable. The DNC, globalists, and Zohran Mamdani’s Muslim, and sadly, Jewish, backers will...

The Trump Administration has made the decision to attack military installations inside Venezuela and the strikes could come at any moment, sources with knowledge of the situation told the Miami Herald, as the U.S. prepares to initiate the next stage of its campaign against the Soles drug cartel. The planned attacks, also reported by the Wall Street Journal, will seek to destroy military installations used by the drug-trafficking organization the U.S. says is headed by Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro and run by top members of his regime. Sources told the Herald that the targets — which could be struck by...

The Justice Department is probing whether Black Lives Matter (BLM) defrauded donors who sent the organization millions of dollars during the racial justice protests in 2020, the Associated Press is reporting. Federal law enforcement authorities have issued subpoenas and served a search warrant as part of an investigation into the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Inc. that helped ignite protests in U.S. cities following the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May 2020, anonymous sources told the wire service. Protests in some locations resulted in deaths, rioting, looting, fires, and extensive property destruction. According to AP: It was...

A meteorite discovered in Northwest Africa... Scientists say this ancient rock -- formed more than 4.56 billion years ago -- proves that planet-building processes in the outer reaches of the solar system began just as quickly as they did closer to the Sun.In a study published in Communications Earth & Environment, researchers analyzed a rare meteorite known as Northwest Africa (NWA) 12264, revealing that the body it originated from -- a fully formed protoplanet beyond Jupiter -- was already active during the very dawn of the Solar System.The findings challenge the prevailing assumption that outer Solar System planets formed more...

Leading 20th century Roman Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar contended that Protestantism had no place for beauty in its theology. “Contemporary Protestant theology nowhere deals with the beautiful as a theological category,” he wrote. “For the time being, the only question posed by Protestants is that concerning the relationship between revelation and this-worldly beauty—certainly a justified question, but not a sufficient one.” Dutch Reformed theological heavyweight Herman Bavinck seems to provide evidence of von Balthasar’s charge. Bavinck wrote, “It is not advisable to speak—with the church fathers, scholastics, and Catholic theologians—of God’s beauty.” Bavinck beautifully summarizes Augustine’s view that...

Dear Friend, Earlier this week, I led a group of governors in a letter calling on the White House to prevent disruption of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) during the federal government shutdown. SNAP is more than just a food assistance program, it’s a lifeline. Forty-two million Americans, including 16 million children and 8 million seniors, rely on SNAP to buy groceries so they can feed themselves and their families. SNAP also supports local farmers and grocers and strengthens our communities and economy. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) instructed states to stop processing SNAP benefits...

YouTube TV viewers can no longer see Disney channels including ABC and ESPN after the two sides failed to agree on a new content distribution deal. Other channels that vanished from Google’s pay TV platform include the Disney Channel, FX and Nat Geo. Google’s pay TV platform said in a blog post late Thursday that Disney had followed through on a threat to suspend its content amid the negotiations.

Riley Gaines clapped back at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., in the latest edition of her OutKick podcast, "Gaines for Girls," after their recent social media feud. The two went back and forth in a spat that stemmed from AOC saying if Gaines had put "all this anger into swimming faster [she] wouldn't have come in fifth place" in the 2022 NCAA Division I Women’s Swimming & Diving Championships. Gaines mentioned that she is in the "roughly 2%" of people who competed in Division I athletics and that "there are only eight women … who make the final and are All-Americans...

In 1517, in the famous act of defiance that launched the Protestant Reformation, Luther nailed his “95 theses” on indulgences to the door of the Castle Church in Wittenberg. Among them was this devastating question: ” 82. Why does not the pope, whose wealth is today greater than the wealth of the richest Croesus, build this one basilica of St. Peter with his own money rather than with the money of poor believers ?” In exposing the empty claims of the church to be God’s authority on earth, Luther challenged the entire hierarchy responsible for exploiting Catholic believers. In his...

There’s a peculiar phenomenon in nature where lemmings supposedly march off cliffs in mass suicide. While that myth has been debunked, something eerily similar is happening in New York City, where voters appear ready to elect their own economic executioner.Zohran Mamdani, the 34-year-old democratic socialist, commands a commanding 15-point lead in the mayoral race, polling at 46 percent to Andrew Cuomo’s 31 percent. His platform reads like a Bernie Sanders fever dream: rent freezes, free bus services, fully-funded daycare, city-owned grocery stores, and a $30 minimum wage. Young voters under 30 give him an astronomical 35-point advantage.The Uganda-born assemblyman, who...

One of President Donald Trump’s most vocal critics, Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., is raising eyebrows over a “bizarre inconsistency” in his campaign’s Federal Election Commission filings that list several different reasons for payments to a Haitian American staffer, totaling over $360,000. FEC filings from Swalwell for Congress and his Remedy PAC, dating back to 2021 and as recently as last month, show over 75 payments to an individual named Darly Meyer, with various reasons given for the disbursements. Individual payments vary from as little as $53 to over $12,000. Based on the payments, Meyer has earned varying amounts each year,...

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., warned against President Donald Trump's demand for the Senate to invoke the "nuclear option" to end the government shutdown. Johnson was asked during his Friday press conference about a late-night Truth Social post in which Trump demanded the Senate get rid of the filibuster and its 60-vote threshold to ram through the GOP's federal funding bill by a simple majority. "Look, I'll just say this in general, as I've said many times about the filibuster, it's not my call. I don't have a say in this. It's a Senate chamber issue," Johnson said. "But the...

More than half of all illegal-immigrant households have at least one U.S.-born child through whom they can receive aid. Nearly 2.7 million households have at least one illegal head and one child, and more than 5.3 million U.S.-born children of illegal aliens hold Social Security numbers. The total estimated cost to American taxpayers of providing SNAP benefits to the children of illegal aliens is almost $5.8 billion. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, data from the 2022 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) indicates that 54 percent of households headed by immigrants—including naturalized citizens, legal residents, and illegal...

One of the most important private collections of iconic TV show costumes has achieved $3.2m (£2.4m) in sales. The highlight of Dr. Stewart Berkowitz’s legendary collection saw the original Adam West “Batman” and Burt Ward “Robin” costume ensembles together fetch a remarkable $575k (£436k). Heritage Auctions offered more than 300 pieces from the New Jersey-based oncologist and pop-culture collector’s treasure trove of screen-used television costumes, props and vehicles from the 1950s through the 1970s. Other notable sales included Lynda Carter’s Wonder Woman costume at $225k (£171k), Cesar Romero’s Joker outfit from Batman at $212k (£161k), and the Batscanner receiver prop,...

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia has deployed around 170,000 troops in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region where they are trying to capture the stronghold of Pokrovsk in a major push for a battlefield victory, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Friday.“The situation in Pokrovsk is difficult,” Zelenskyy said, while also rejecting recent Russian claims that the devastated city is surrounded after more than a year of fighting. He acknowledged that some Russian units had infiltrated the city, but insisted that Ukrainian defenders are weeding them out.“There are Russians in Pokrovsk,” Zelenskyy told a media briefing in Kyiv. “They are being destroyed, gradually...

Is “Christian Zionism” an oxymoron? Worse still, is it a heresy? And whether it is an oxymoron or a heresy, is it a recent creation, dating back no earlier than the 19th century? Before we answer these questions, let’s first define our terms. If Zionism is the belief that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people, then Christian Zionism is the belief that the Bible affirms that Israel is the homeland of the Jewish people. It’s that simple. We can now answer the first question: Is “Christian Zionism” an oxymoron? Not at all, since it can easily be demonstrated...

The Feast of All Saints as we know it today has its origins in that period of chaos and transition between Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages. One of the milestones in the development of the Feast took place in the year AD 608 when Pope Boniface IV consecrated the formerly pagan temple known as the Pantheon in Rome to Our Lady and All the Saints. The Pantheon, of course, is that marvelous architectural monument to Roman ingenuity which has somehow managed to survive the scourge of time and come down to us practically intact. Originally built as a...

An independent filmmaker says that he was filming a documentary outside of a Planned Parenthood in California when police handcuffed him, confiscated his equipment and forced him to sit in the back of a cop car for almost an hour — an incident his attorney argued violated his rights. According to Dan Brown Jr., he was filming a street preacher named Brother Ed and other evangelists for a documentary titled "Cry Aloud," a name that may change further into production. The film, he explained, focuses on confrontational street evangelists and their interactions with law enforcement, and examines questions about the...

Weeks after Jeffrey Epstein died in federal custody in 2019 awaiting prosecution on sex-trafficking charges, JPMorgan Chase filed a report alerting the U.S. government to tens of millions of dollars of potentially suspicious transactions involving him and prominent Wall Street and business figures. The so-called suspicious activity report that JPMorgan filed identified transactions with Leon Black, the co-founder of private equity firm Apollo Global Management; Glenn Dubin, a well-known hedge fund manager; the lawyer Alan Dershowitz; and trusts controlled by Leslie Wexner, the retail tycoon. The nature of the transactions, as well as Mr. Epstein’s role in them, is unclear....