Free Republic

The President, I have decided, is a genius... Reading over the great ideas of the new Supreme Court appointee and of those who appointed her, I have decided that the time has come to admit facts. A colleague of mine has long been telling me that the 1787 Constitution has nothing to do with what actually rules the country. No part of it still holds. Many judges and their apologists pride themselves on the fact that they are bound by foreign law, or by what is needed, or by what they would like to see. But they are not much...

Passionate debates over doctrine, identity, and the boundaries of “communion” have been a staple of the American religious landscape for centuries: Trinitarians vs. Unitarians in 19th-century New England; Modernists vs. Fundamentalists in early-20th-century Presbyterianism; Missouri Synod Lutherans vs. Wisconsin Synod Lutherans vs. Other Sorts of Lutherans down to today. Yet never in our history has a president of the United States, in the exercise of his public office, intervened in such disputes in order to secure a political advantage. Until yesterday, at the University of Notre Dame...

Judgment Day is on its way. We cannot stop it. We don’t know when it will come, but just as surely as the sun rises daily, the Son of Man will come when we least expect. Judgment Day is on its way. For many, this coming election may very well be judgment day, for this election will measure us. In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus tells us in 10:32-33: "Everyone who acknowledges Me before others, I will acknowledge before My heavenly Father. But whoever denies Me before others, I will deny before my heavenly Father." Judgment Day is on its...

This is an excellent, powerful pro-life, pro-faith video directed at Catholic voters. I think non-Catholics of faith will also be interested in it.

Our recent coverage of the scandal at Richmond Catholic Charities ( CCR) tells a sordid tale of tragedy, secrecy, and sub­terfuge. But this incident, sorrowful as it is, also reveals a deeper and more per­vasive problem that has plagued the Church in America for decades. That problem is the power of rogue bureaucra­cies that have hijacked the work of the Church and secularized it. In many cas­es, like that in Richmond, they have to­tally corrupted it. Sometimes we have to wonder if the chanceries have learned anything from the clerical abuse scandals and cover- ups that have so damaged the...

The schismatic traditionalist Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX) has reacted to a Vatican ultimatum by challenging the conditions Rome set for its return to the Catholic fold. By sending this in a letter, SSPX leader Bishop Bernard Fellay partly fulfilled one condition of the ultimatum, i.e. answering by the end of this month. But he did not fulfill the more important other half of that requirement, i.e. that he respond positively. In fact, he told the Vatican that other conditions — to accept papal authority and not criticise the pope — were too vague to be accepted, according to...

The most consequential cultural and political event in American history in the past half century was the Roe v. Wade decision of January 22, 1973. An argument can be made that it is rivaled by September 11, but that fateful day did not result in the deep realignment of religious, cultural, and political dynamics resulting from the Supreme Court’s ukase... Among the religious institutions of national influence, the Catholic Church stood alone in protesting the immediate evil and long-term implications of Roe v. Wade. Although it is largely forgotten today, evangelical Protestantism was in support of Roe v. Wade... At...

For a few moments today, Benedict XVI wore the tricornio, the traditional three cornered hat used by the Guardia Civil, which someone gave him after the general audience in St. Peter’s Square. At the end of the audience, the Pope – as he does every Sunday – went down to greet the people in the first rows. While he was speaking with some Italian military officers, someone gave him the three cornered hat. He smiled and quickly put it on for a few seconds.

The Venezuelan president will personally attend the ceremony that he has organized to sign the contracts with the Zapatero government. The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, has gone all out to organize the signing of the military contracts with Spain that the defense ministers of both countries, Admiral Orlando Maniglia and José Bono, respectively, will sign today in Venezuela. The overall amount of the contracts is some 2 billion dollars, the largest amount ever invested by Chávez in military material. In this case, it is eight patrol boats and twelve Spanish aircraft, and yesterday Chávez thanked Spain for not “giving in...

The Venezuelan ambassador to Spain, Arévalo Méndez Romero, declared that Venzuela will sign with Spanish companies the contract for sale of military material it had worked out with Spain, despite the warnings of the United States. This was the rsponse of Méndez Romero, before a small group of journalists, to the United States ambassador, Eduardo Aguirre, who reminded him that the United States has to authorize the sale of 12 aircraft and eight patrol boats, because they include US technology. According to the Venezuelan ambassador, there is “no problem” in signing the agreement, which is already firm, because the US...

“Traditional Islam: The Path to Peace” Address by King Abdullah II of Jordan Remarks by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick Archbishop of Washington and CUA Chancellor CUA Columbus School of Law Sept. 13, 2005 Your Majesty, King Abdullah Your Majesty Queen Rania Prince Ghazi Members of the delegation from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan Father President Distinguished guests from many faith communities Dear friends all, Your Majesty, A few months ago, when I was privileged to pray for you on another occasion in this capital city, I asked Allah, the compassionate and merciful Lord of all the world, to bless you and...

BATON ROUGE, Louisiana (Reuters) - With thousands of troops pouring into New Orleans, law enforcement officials vowed on Saturday to retake the swamped city and halt a crime wave that erupted after Hurricane Katrina's destruction. Saying he was carrying a message from President Bush, New Orleans U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said police and prosecutors were ready to hunt down a small group of criminals responsible for "horrendous" crimes in the stricken city. "The streets of New Orleans belong to its citizens, not the violent thugs who have stuck their heads up out of holes in an attempt to exploit a...

And you think our Senators and Reps are bad. BTW, Joan, pronounced Joh-áhn, is Catalan for Juan or John: According to El Mundo [a left-wing but unpredictable Spanish paper], the assault took place on August 14th and was lead by the Representative from Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya [leftist Catalan nationalist partý[, Joan Puig, pictured in the photo on the right, carrying his Parliamentary ID card in his mouth. They confronted the guards at the home of the editor of El Mundo, breaking the arm of one of them...Joan Puig and his companions are claiming Congressional immunity to avoid prosecution.

Vatican Radio - the New Revised Standard Version. Actually, it's the NRS Douai version. Click on "Live." Or click on other interesting links on this page.

After the approval last Friday [in the Spanish Congress] of a law on homosexual unions, the Executive Committee of the Spanish Bishops’ Conference has issued a notice in which it describes this law as “radically unjust” and calls for clear opposition to it, demanding the right of conscientious objection. The document, entitled “Conscientious Objection to a Radically Unjust Law That Degrades the Institution of Matrimony,” declares: “It is not true that this law expands a right, because the union of persons of the same sex cannot be marriage. This union is in reality a legal counterfeit of matrimony, as damaging...

Although the decision has not been made yet, ETA is already thinking about the location for negotiations between ETA and the Spanish government, which no one doubts will occur sooner or later…According to anti-terrorist sources consulted by La Razón, Venezuela is being discussed as a possibility. It is a country that is well regarded by both parties. The government of Zapatero has an excellent relationship with the Chavez regime, supporting it internationally against the United States. ETA has numerous “refugee” groups (terrorists who have fled from the Spanish Justice Department) in Venezuela and the importance of the Basque colony is...

The bishop of the Diocese of Segorbe-Castellón, Juan Antonio Reig Pla, called for “civil disobedience” from those mayors who do not want to marry homosexual couples, and declared that “restricting religious freedom is the worst thing of all.” At a press conference, Bishop Reig Pla declared that the Government “is going to recognize rights never established by law which are purely subjective,” and said that the next step is that “if any mayor is being forced to sacrifice his conscience and carry out acts that have to be against his correctly formed conscience, it has got to end in civil...

John Kerry did not meet with the Spaniard although a meeting had been scheduled. Cuba and Venezuela once again emerged as the principal stumbling blocks in the relationship between the US and Spain… The Spanish Foreign Minister, who will meet with US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice today, had a busy schedule, including a meeting with US senators, a working breakfast with “The Washington Post” and meetings with the Brookings Institute and the Hispanic Caucus of the House of Representatives. Among other things, he had planned to meet with John Kerry, the former presidential candidate beaten by President Bush, but...

Forges an axis of Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay Three fleeting visits in nine months, supplemented by discreet but abundant diplomatic activities, have sufficed to let José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero build a progressivist axis in South America, composed of Brazil, Argentina, Chile and Uruguay. He has received the commitment of their respective presidents, all leftists, to cooperate on the international level, particularly in the United Nations, with the Europeanist, multilateralist axis formed by Paris, Berlin and Madrid. The Spanish leader began his return trip to Madrid yesterday after having visited four South American cities in four days: Brasilia, Sao Paolo,...

COPE [Spanish radio station] has learned that it has been confirmed that José Bono, [Spanish] Minister of Defense, is in Venezuela. Bono is thought to have arrived in Caracas around ten p.m. last night, Venezuelan time. Various sources consulted by this station claim that the minister’s trip is in response to the express request made by Ambassador Raúl Morado to the Spanish Prime Minister, Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, for the signing of a contract with the Venezuelan government for the construction of military vessels [by Spain for the VZ navy]. The Prime Minister himself was going to sign the agreement during...