Free Republic

Many will be gathering in church, celebrating the birth of Jesus over the next two days, for one of the most joyous times of the year.But a CNN religion commentator, Roman Catholic priest Fr. Edward Beck, has some thoughts on the subject that seem contrary to everything I learned about the love of one’s neighbor as a Catholic. He’s telling people to stay home, effectively telling them they are not welcome in the Church — on one of the most important days of celebration for Catholics — if they are unvaccinated.Yep. I said it. I don’t think unvaccinated people should...

Renowned priest calls on pro-life Americans to ‘make it their first priority…to re-elect President Trump’ MP>TITUSVILLE, Florida, July 27, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – On Sunday, July 26, which marked the 100-day point until the completion of Elections 2020, Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, called on pro-life Americans to “make it their first priority, as it will be mine, to re-elect President Trump.” “With 100 days left until Election Day, November 3, 2020, I call upon all of my fellow patriots who embrace pro-life and conservative principles to put aside, as much as possible, all other activities and...

Teaching about Islam taught me many things. I enjoyed being a priest helping the people for some years. However, deep inside I was not happy and I felt that there was something not right. Fortunately, and it is God’s will, some events and coincidences in my life led me to Islam. I used to think of Egypt as a country of Pyramids, camels, sand and palm trees. I actually took a charter flight to Hurghada. Shocked to find it similar to some European beaches, I took the first bus to Cairo where I spent the most wonderful week in my...

Boxer Unhinged: You berate anyone who disagrees with you as immoral and corrupt Rob is our resident Catholic, so I defer to him on matters of Catholic doctrine. But from the looks of things I know a lot more about it than self-identified Catholic Barbara Boxer - whose real religion appears to be global warming. Or should I say, the massively expanded and empowered government we’ll get if only people stop questioning the left-wing orthodoxy on things like global warming, which demands that all debate stop immediately and that government be given whatever it wants so it can do something,...

April 1, 1854, Brush Creek, Missouri: Peter Tolton paced nearby as his wife, Martha Jane, gave birth to their second son. They named him Augustus (after his uncle), and before the month was out, the baby was baptized in nearby St. Peter's Catholic Church. Mrs. Savilla Elliot stood as Augustus' godmother.The baptism of Augustus was a bit unusual. That was because Mrs. Elliot was married to Stephen Elliot, who happened to be the "owner" of Augustus' mom and dad. Mr. and Mrs. Tolton were slaves, and their three children, Charley, Augustus and Anne, were born into slavery. The slave...

This Christmas was particularly joyous for Father Albert Scharbach, who celebrated its liturgies just a few weeks after his ordination as a Catholic priest for the Personal Ordinariate of the Chair of St. Peter. “I feel like myself again, but much more,” Father Scharbach said of his Nov. 15 ordination. “I am humbled and grateful to be part of the gracious exception (the ordinariate) in the life of the church.” Initially ordained an Anglican priest in 2005, Father Scharbach was ordained a Catholic priest through the ordinariate, established in 2009 by Pope Benedict XVI to make it easier to welcome...

...Residents of another main eastern city, Darna, have also begun to stand up against Ansar al-Shariah and other militias. The anti-militia fervor in Darna is notable because the city, in the mountains along the Mediterranean coast north of Benghazi, has long had a reputation as a stronghold for Islamic extremists. During the Gadhafi era, it was the hotbed of a deadly Islamist insurgency against his regime. A significant number of the Libyan jihadists who travelled to Afghanistan and Iraq during recent wars came from Darna. During the revolt against him last year, Gadhafi's regime warned that Darna would declare itself...

UNITED NATIONS — A former Nicaraguan foreign minister who once called President Ronald Reagan “the butcher of my people” has been appointed to represent Libya at the United Nations after its delegate was denied a visa, the Nicaraguan government said on Wednesday. Nicaragua said the former minister, Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, 78, an outspoken critic of the United States and a Catholic priest, would replace the Libyan diplomat Ali Abdussalam Treki, who had been unable to obtain a visa to enter the United States. Libya’s ambassador to the United Nations, Abdurrahman Mohamed Shalgam, defected in late February after denouncing Col. Muammar...

For years, Monsignor Kevin McAuliffe lived something of a double life. He was widely admired by his flock at St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, which he helped build into one of the largest Roman Catholic parishes in the Las Vegas area. But at the same time, he was stealing money from the church. He stole from the gift shop. He stole from the votive candle collection. He stole from a fund for novenas, or Masses in honor of the dead. Over nearly a decade, he pocketed about $650,000. His motive was all too familiar in slot-machine-heavy Nevada. McAuliffe was a gambling...

SPRINGFIELD - As his defense lawyer feared, a videotaped deposition of disgraced Bishop Thomas L. Dupre may soon make the Internet in the wink of a cybereye, after a Hampden Superior Court judge denied his motion to keep the interview from the public.

The Venezuelan Attorney General’s Office said it is investigating the death of a U.S. Catholic priest whose body was found with stab wounds Thursday morning inside a parish house in the eastern state of Bolivar. The Rev. Esteban Woods, 68, of Vancouver, Washington, had been serving as a priest in Venezuela for eight years and was currently the pastor of the Holy Family Church of Puerto Ordaz, the AG office said in a communique. “We found him gagged and stabbed on the floor of his room,” the pastor of the Our Lady of Coromoto Church, the Rev. Miguel Angel Garcia,...

You’ve seen the latest video rant from Trinity featuring a Catholic priest in the lead role? Apparently the guy is just what you’d expect to find in any Catholic parish [/snark]: Ambushed by a Bill O’Reilly camera crew, Pfleger stated: "He (Farrakhan) has—first of all, he has not called Judaism a gutter religion of blood suckers. That is not what he has said because I have heard that talk. I stick up for Louis Farrakhan because he is another person that the media has chosen to define how they want to do it. And they demonize how they want to...

PARIS: His subjects were mostly children and teenagers at the time, terrified witnesses to mass slaughter. Some were forced to work at the bottom rung of the Nazi Germany killing machine - as the diggers of mass graves, as cooks who fed Nazi soldiers, as seamstresses who mended clothes stripped from the Jews before execution. The witnesses live today in rural poverty, many without running water or heat, nearing the end of their lives. So Patrick Desbois has been quietly seeking them out, roaming the back roads and forgotten fields of Ukraine, hearing their stories and searching for the unmarked...

The political and constitutional turmoil in Haiti deepened yesterday as the country's parliament ceased to function and President Jean-Bertrand Aristide began in effect to rule by decree while mass protests against him continued. With a general strike entering its fifth day, President Aristide delivered a speech at the airport in Port-au-Prince in which he failed to mention the clamour for him to step down. Amid tight security, the President then left on his private jet to attend the Summit of the Americas in Mexico. His address was dedicated to honouring the founding fathers of Haiti, which became the world's first...

The Italian Monsignor suspended from his job in the Roman Curia after he acknowledged homosexual relations in an anonymous television interview, has revealed he has a list of active homosexuals working in the Vatican. Msgr Tommaso Stenico was removed from his duties at the Congregation for Clergy after the Italian La7 television network showed a videotape in which he propositioned a young man. Although the priest’s face was obscured, Vatican officials were able to identify his voice and his office, in which the video was surreptitiously recorded. However, soon after his identity was discovered, Stenico proclaimed he had never been...

Federal jury clears anti-abortion activist A U.S. District Court jury deliberated for just over two hours before finding the Rev. Norman Weslin not guilty Thursday of blocking the entrance to an abortion clinic in violation of a federal law. Weslin, 76, was arrested April 24, 2006, when he entered the Bellevue abortion clinic run by Dr. LeRoy Carhart.[Infamous Partial Birth Abortion specialist] The Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act forbids the use of "force, threat of force or physical obstruction" to prevent someone from providing or receiving reproductive health services. Weslin had faced 18 months in a federal prison,...

A priest charged with embezzling more than $800,000 from two Cape Cod churches will go to trial on July 31, authorities say. Attorneys for the Rev. Bernard Kelly and prosecutors agreed on the date at a brief meeting in Barnstable Superior Court on Friday morning. Kelly is charged with using funds from St. Joseph's parish in Falmouth and Our Lady of Lourdes in Wellfleet for his personal use. The Diocese of Fall River estimated that Kelly misused more than $800,000 of church funds. The diocese sued Kelly, and the sides agreed to a $1.3 million settlement last year. But Kelly...

In a rare move reminiscent of medieval times, the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino convened a secret tribunal against a Riverside priest Tuesday after charging him with heresy and schism. Meeting at diocesan headquarters in San Bernardino, the tribunal took up the case against the Rev. Ned Reidy, 69, who said he left the Roman Catholic Church five years ago and formed his own parish near Palm Desert. The parish later affiliated with a new denomination that holds services resembling those of the Roman Catholic Church but rejects the authority of the pope, mandatory priestly celibacy, and prohibitions against...

VATICAN CITY (AP) - A priest from China's nongovernment controlled Catholic church who has been under house arrest for nearly six years has been released, Vatican Radio and a missionary news service reported Saturday. The Rev. Vincent Kong Guocun, 34, was freed June 8 because of poor health, Vatican Radio reported, citing the news agency Eglises d'Asie. The Catholic missionary news service, AsiaNews, carried an identical report citing a Catholic church source in China. Kong, from Wenzhou, on China's southeast coast, had been kept under house arrest since Oct. 20, 1999, the reports said. His parents were only allowed to...

He was a Vietnam legend, the priest. Ralph Oriscello first heard about him while treating injured soldiers at the 93rd Evacuation Hospital in South Vietnam in the fall of 1967. One after another, the soldiers told the story of how the priest, unarmed except for a crucifix and a prayer, ran into the middle of a mortar firestorm and dragged wounded men to safety. As the battle escalated and the casualties mounted, so did the priest's momentum. With mortar shells exploding all around him, he brought back one injured man after another, saving lives and comforting souls. "Many of the...