Free Republic

Posted on July 2, 2020July 2, 2020 by Msgr. Charles Pope A Warning From The Prophet Amos Explains a Lot of Our Current Decline Continuing this small series on the decline of culture, a word from the Prophet Amos in today’s reading (Thursday of the 13th week of the year) paints a brief picture of what happens when we a nation demand that the Word of God be banished from it hearing. The picture is not complete and may need a bit of adjustment to fit our times but the basic parameters are clear. Let’s look at an excerpt...

Teach About Marxism’s Evils We cannot allow another generation to emerge from our schools so ignorant of communism's horrors that they see no problem in courting, dabbling with, or even passively accepting one of history’s most noxious ideologies.
 My child’s Catholic school sent home a letter to parents this week recommending “conversations about white privilege” to encourage “compassionate hearts and confident minds.” Regurgitating the radical-left bile that fuels the fires of resentment and division will not enrich students emotionally or intellectually. Instead, Catholic schools should teach students about the evils of Marxism.Marxist apostles are orchestrating the chaos and violence plaguing...

July 6 2020 Monday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 Hos 2:16, 17c-18, 21-22 Thus says the LORD: I will allure her; I will lead her into the desert and speak to her heart. She shall respond there as in the days of her youth, when she came up from the land of Egypt.On that day, says the LORD, She shall call me “My husband,” and never again “My baal.”I will espouse you to me forever: I will espouse you in right and in justice, in love and in mercy; I will espouse you in fidelity,...

Posted on July 4, 2020 Stop Yoking Around – A Homily for the 14th Sunday of the Year We in the West live in a place and at a time in which almost every burden of manual labor has been eliminated. Not only that, but creature comforts abound. Everything from air conditioning to hair conditioning, from fast food to high speed internet, from to indoor plumbing to outdoor grilling, from instant computer downloads to instant coffee machines. You don’t even have write letters anymore, just press send and a text or email is delivered nearly instantaneously. Yet despite all...

July 5, 2020 Fourteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Reading 1 Zec 9:9-10 Thus says the LORD: Rejoice heartily, O daughter Zion, shout for joy, O daughter Jerusalem! See, your king shall come to you; a just savior is he, meek, and riding on an ass, on a colt, the foal of an ass. He shall banish the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem; the warrior’s bow shall be banished, and he shall proclaim peace to the nations. His dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth. Responsorial Psalm...

Posted on July 1, 2020July 2, 2020 Right Fear, Wrong Fear The readings from Tuesday (13th week of the year speak about the right and wrong kinds of fear. The wrong kind of fear is illustrated in the Gospel reading:As Jesus got into a boat, his disciples followed him. Suddenly a violent storm came up on the sea, so that the boat was being swamped by waves; but he was asleep. They came and woke him, saying, “Lord, save us! We are perishing!” He said to them, “Why are you terrified, O you of little faith?” Then he got up,...

July 4 2020 Saturday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 Am 9:11-15 Thus says the LORD: On that day I will raise up the fallen hut of David; I will wall up its breaches, raise up its ruins, and rebuild it as in the days of old, That they may conquer what is left of Edom and all the nations that shall bear my name, say I, the LORD, who will do this. Yes, days are coming, says the LORD, When the plowman shall overtake the reaper, and the vintager, him who sows the seed; The...

July 3 2020 Feast of Saint Thomas, Apostle Reading 1 Eph 2:19-22 Brothers and sisters: You are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit. Responsorial Psalm 117:1bc, 2 R. (Mark 16:15) Go out to all...

July 2 2020 Thursday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1Am 7:10-17 Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent word to Jeroboam, king of Israel: “Amos has conspired against you here within Israel; the country cannot endure all his words. For this is what Amos says: Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel shall surely be exiled from its land.”To Amos, Amaziah said: “Off with you, visionary, flee to the land of Judah! There earn your bread by prophesying, but never again prophesy in Bethel; for it is the king’s sanctuary and a royal temple.” Amos answered...

Posted on June 30, 2020 by Msgr. Charles Pope Of Hunger and Hallucinations – How the Stages of Starvation Describe the Decaying West This is the third in a series of articles on the decline of the West. Given the exceptionally poor condition of whatever is left of Western Culture and Christendom, it may help us in this article to gain some perspective of what is going on from the stages of starvation.Physical hunger is a serious problem; We are obliged to assist the starving and malnourished. But even more prevalent these days is spiritual hunger, if not outright...

July 1 2020 Wednesday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 Am 5:14-15, 21-24 Seek good and not evil, that you may live; Then truly will the LORD, the God of hosts, be with you as you claim! Hate evil and love good, and let justice prevail at the gate; Then it may be that the LORD, the God of hosts, will have pity on the remnant of Joseph.I hate, I spurn your feasts, says the LORD, I take no pleasure in your solemnities; Your cereal offerings I will not accept, nor consider your stall-fed peace offerings....

A Catholic institution should uphold Catholic beliefs’A student at Villanova University is accusing her academic advisor of trying to intimidate her over tweets critical of the university’s promotion of Pride Month. Melanie Didioti, a graduate student at the Catholic university outside of Philadelphia, recently tweeted criticism of the school’s athletic department for its Pride Month tweet on June 22. The tweet said: “Love is Love. Happy #PrideMonth – We are proud to be an ally of the LGBTQ+ Community.”

Posts Posted on June 29, 2020June 29, 2020 How Civilizations Rise and Fall in Eight Stages In yesterday’s post we examined the danger of marginalizing God and how the Lord warns that such a thing is a civilization killer. In today’s post we ponder a more sociological examination of how cultures and civilizations go through cycles. Over time, many civilizations and cultures have risen and then fallen. We who live in painful times like these do well to recall these truths. Cultures and civilizations come and go; only the Church (though often in need of reform) and true biblical...

June 30 2020 Tuesday of the Thirteenth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 Am 3:1-8; 4:11-12 Hear this word, O children of Israel, that the LORD pronounces over you, over the whole family that I brought up from the land of Egypt:You alone have I favored, more than all the families of the earth; Therefore I will punish you for all your crimes.Do two walk together unless they have agreed? Does a lion roar in the forest when it has no prey? Does a young lion cry out from its den unless it has seized something? Is a bird...

Yesterday, while praying for peace and unity in our city and the protection of the Saint Louis statue, Black Lives Matter protesters started to harass, berate, and assault the Catholics that were peacefully praying. We did nothing in retaliation (Thread with documentation) 1/8 We allowed them to spit on us, call us names, put their fingers in our faces, push us, and antagonize, but we did not retaliate. We continued to peacefully pray. At that moment someone in the crowd poured an unidentified liquid on the older man, pictured below protecting his head, and was then attacked by a violent...

OPEN LETTER TO LEGISLATORS REGARDING FETAL CELL DNA IN VACCINESApril 8, 2019My name is Dr. Theresa Deisher. I am Founder and Lead Scientist at Sound Choice Pharmaceutical Institute, whose mission is to educate the public about vaccine safety, as well as to pressure manufacturers to provide better and safer vaccines for the public. I obtained my doctorate from Stanford University in Molecular and Cellular Physiology in 1990 and completed my post-doctoral work at the University of Washington. My career has been spent in the commercial biotechnology industry, and I have done work from basic biological and drug discovery through clinical...

Posts Posted on June 28, 2020 A Question and a Warning from the Lord. In the 4th Century, St. Augustine lamented the decline of Rome and Roman culture. Like any good citizen, he loved his country and culture. But things were falling to pieces, decadence was everywhere. He struggled to understand this and accept it. In his sorrow he wrote The City of God which contains his own observations and explanations of a time much like our own wherein a civilization was collapsing.There is something of a cycle that empires, nations, cultures and civilizations go through. They rise, sometimes...

June 29 2020 Solemnity of Saints Peter and Paul, Apostles Reading 1 Acts 12:1-11 In those days, King Herod laid hands upon some members of the Church to harm them. He had James, the brother of John, killed by the sword, and when he saw that this was pleasing to the Jews he proceeded to arrest Peter also. –It was the feast of Unleavened Bread.– He had him taken into custody and put in prison under the guard of four squads of four soldiers each. He intended to bring him before the people after Passover. Peter thus was being...

Posted on June 27, 2020June 27, 2020 by Msgr. Charles Pope Four Disciplines of Worthy Disciples – A Homily for the 13th Sunday of the Year In the Gospel this Sunday, the Lord gives four important principles for a disciple. He also teaches on the concept of being worthy of Him. We tend think of being worthy as acting in a way that meets a certain standard, but the Greek word for “worthy” involves more than merely external behavior, important though that is. To be worthy of the Lord is to ascribe worth and give proper weight to who...

June 28 2020 Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time Reading 1 2 Kgs 4:8-11, 14-16a One day Elisha came to Shunem, where there was a woman of influence, who urged him to dine with her. Afterward, whenever he passed by, he used to stop there to dine. So she said to her husband, “I know that Elisha is a holy man of God. Since he visits us often, let us arrange a little room on the roof and furnish it for him with a bed, table, chair, and lamp, so that when he comes to us he can stay there.”...