Free Republic

Just a brief note to inform you that I have been blocked from Facebook. They claim that Msgr. Charles Pope is not my real name and are requiring me to submit government ID proving that Msgr. Charles Pope is my true identity. As of now, I have no intention of doing this since I consider it an unreasonable demand by them. They further indicate that even if I supply the IDs from at least two sources, that they reserve the right not to reactivate my account if the name I have used does not meet their preferences. They explain the...

...[T]he Boy Scouts of America voted to admit openly gay adults into the organization to hold leadership positions. While there are indications that the BSA has a religious organization exception, which each local troop could invoke, that will provide no protection for any of our parishes and/or schools, which sponsor troops. Thus, effective immediately, the Catholic Church of the Diocese of Bismarck and each and every one of its parishes, schools and other institutions, is formally disaffiliated with and from the Boy Scouts of America. If your parish sponsors a troop, your priest has been asked to inform those persons...

Despite repeatedly losing its cases over the Obamacare contraceptive mandate at the U.S. Supreme Court, the Department of Health and Human Services announced Friday that it will continue to force religious organizations to distribute contraceptives – including the “week-after pill” – to their employees. As a news release at the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty states, the Obama administration has been handed “multiple losses in contraceptive mandate cases at the Supreme Court,” including the Hobby Lobby decision, and cases involving the Little Sisters of the Poor and Wheaton College. Last week, the Supreme Court ordered the Obama administration not to...

Pope Francis arrived in Bolivia on Wednesday on the second leg of his South American tour and immediately insisted that the Catholic Church continue to play an important role in society amid efforts by the government of President Evo Morales to curb its influence.... Morales came to power championing Bolivia's 36 indigenous groups and enshrined their rights in the constitution, and under his leadership Bolivia's economy has boomed thanks to high prices for its natural gas and minerals. But Morales has roiled the local church by taking a series of anti-clerical initiatives, including a new constitution that made the overwhelmingly...

New color images from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft show two very different faces of the mysterious dwarf planet, one with a series of intriguing spots along the equator that are evenly spaced. Each of the spots is about 300 miles in diameter, with a surface area that’s roughly the size of the state of Missouri. Scientists have yet to see anything quite like the dark spots; their presence has piqued the interest of the New Horizons science team, due to the remarkable consistency in their spacing and size. While the origin of the spots is a mystery for now, the...

...One thing that I wish from Pope Francis is that he be more emphatic in his statements, and be more specific as to whether or not all weapons manufacturers are evil, or that only the ones who profit from evil are placing their souls in jeopardy. I doubt Francis himself takes the former position, since he is constantly surrounded by very tough Swiss Guardsmen who are all armed....All of the guns that the Swiss Guard uses are manufactured, and I doubt that Francis is condemning these manufacturers. Lets not forget that not too long ago the Vatican was pushing for...

BREAKING: Preliminary M7.0 earthquake off the east coast of Japan at 6:06pm US EST. Monitoring for any tsunami concerns.

Veterans Day was initially called Armistice Day to celebrate the end of World War I and recognize the soldiers who died. Today it’s a day in the United States to recognize all veterans in all wars—not just those who died or were wounded or even served in a war at all. It’s designed to heap praise and adulation on all things military. In doing so, in the name of patriotism, it therefore endorses all of our war policies, right or wrong. Every veteran becomes a hero and no questions are to be asked of the wisdom, morality, or constitutionality of...

Today, 21st October, is the Feast Day of the Blessed Charles (or Karl) of Austria, beatified in 2004 by the pope Saint John Paul the Great....While devout to be sure, the young Archduke Karl von Habsburg (1887-1922) was also endearingly earnest as he studied his every sequentially-bestowed dynastic honour as though he was a medieval knight-errant preparing to seek the Sacred Grail....Over fewer than two years in power, he outlawed brutal army punishments and stopped submarines from attacking civilian shipping. Inspired by Pope Leo XIII’s encyclical Rerum Novarum, he established sweeping domestic reforms including the world’s first governmental department of...

For months leading up to the Battle of Lepanto, fought on this day 443 years ago, Pope Pius V urged the faithful to pray for military victory against Muslim forces aiming to storm Italy from its Adriatic coast. Specifically, he enjoined Catholics in Europe to pray daily the most holy rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary. The Christian navy prevailed, and on the Roman calendar October 7 was dedicated to Our Lady of Victory. Victory—what a golden word. Christians in earlier times appreciated its value. ICXC NIKA, they wrote. Christus vincit. Christ is victorious. Or, in English more colloquial: Christ...

Fans of the zany Tom and Jerry cartoons from the golden age of animation might be in for a shock, as the classic shorts now carry a politically-correct warning on Amazon's streaming video service. On Tuesday, BBC correspondent Sean Coughlan reported that on Amazon Prime, the "Tom and Jerry: The Complete Second Volume is accompanied by the caution: 'Tom and Jerry shorts may depict some ethnic and racial prejudices that were once commonplace in American society. Such depictions were wrong then and are wrong today.'" Coughlan spotlighted the criticism of University of Kent professor of sociology Frank Furendi, who blasted...

Eric Holder Jr., the nation's first black U.S. attorney general, is preparing to announce his resignation Thursday after a tumultuous tenure marked by civil rights advances, national security threats, reforms to the criminal justice system and five and a half years of fights with Republicans in Congress. Two sources familiar with the decision tell NPR that Holder, 63, intends to leave the Justice Department as soon as his successor is confirmed, a process that could run through 2014 and even into next year. A former U.S. government official says Holder has been increasingly "adamant" about his desire to leave soon...

...We learn of a Maronite Christian seeking a liaison with Hezbollah and it sounds horrifically bad until you realize the purpose is to work together to fight ISIS, for instance. Her descriptive language for the various Christian leaders...suggests a lack of intimacy with the topic.... ...When Cruz was supposed to give the keynote address and discuss the deadly serious topic of persecution of Christians, he instead insulted a largely immigrant and foreign crowd as a group that didn’t understand their own political situation and stomped out of the room after calling them a bunch of haters.... The fact is, as...

Many of you have expressed concern about a blog post I wrote on the St. Patrick’s Day Parade which was removed. I am grateful for your concern about this and all the issues we discuss here. I removed the post upon further reflection due to the strong nature of the language I had used in parts of it. I apologize if the language I used caused offense. I remain concerned about the central point of the article, namely, how we as Catholics can effectively engage a culture that increasingly requires us to affirm what we cannot reasonably affirm. There are...

Tropical Storm Arthur forms off coast of Florida; 1st named storm of the Atlantic season.

A cat came to her best friend's rescue Tuesday when the young boy was attacked in his driveway in Southwest Bakersfield. The surveillance video shows the boy playing on his bicycle when a dog sneaks up behind him and grabs his leg. The family's cat, named Tara, rushes the attacking dog and chased it away. The boy's mother, Eric Triantafilo, told 23ABC the boy needed a few stitches, but he is doing fine this morning.

This morning the Supreme Court held in Town of Greece v. Galloway, that the town's practice of beginning legislative sessions with prayers does not violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. It was a 5-4 decision, split along traditional right-left lines.

The other day I took a funeral for Arthur– one of our WWII vets. He was a sweet, faithful and good Catholic gentleman and a decorated WWII pilot. At the graveside a couple of Marines were present in their dress uniforms for the flag ceremony. They stood tall with shoes shined and hat brims low. After the Catholic ceremony one soldier stood at attention while the other bugled “Taps”. Then he stepped forward, smart and correct. They took the flag and folded it into the famous triangle and handed it to the widow with the set formula of words. It...

Pope Francis on April 25 stressed the need for bishops and priests to give a “consistent witness” to Christian moral teaching, including the lifelong nature of Christian marriage, and to teach these truths “with great compassion.” “The holiness and indissolubility of Christian matrimony, often disintegrating under tremendous pressure from the secular world, must be deepened by clear doctrine and supported by the witness of committed married couples,” Pope Francis said. “Christian matrimony is a lifelong covenant of love between one man and one woman; it entails real sacrifices in order to turn away from illusory notions of sexual freedom and...

Gregorios III Laham, Greek-Melkite Catholics patriarch of Antioch, described the destruction of Ma'aloula churches as "a war crime". On Sunday, he was able to visit the historic Christian village, after the Syrian army retook it from the Islamist al-Nusra Front. "It is the mystery of iniquity that one sees at work," he said, unable to find words strong enough to translate the feelings at the sight of desolation before him. "It is the devastation of the Temple, the mystery of iniquity," he said in a telephone interview from Beirut, the night of his visit. The Greek-Catholic patriarch travelled to the...