Free Republic

The Supreme Court has no excuse for allowing Nevada officials to use a public health crisis to fill poker tables while emptying pews. All four gospels record that the Roman soldiers who crucified Jesus cast lots for his clothing. This was not the last time government agents were more interested in gambling than God. The latest instance is in Nevada, where the state government has granted casinos special privileges denied to churches. Casinos are allowed to operate at half-capacity, while churches are restricted to a hard cap of 50 people, no matter their capacity.When this double standard was challenged in...

President Trump’s restoration of an Executive Order from the Bush Administration that allowed individuals to refuse to participate in performing abortions was voided by Manhattan U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer this week. In his 147-page decision, the Judge found that “there is no legal foundation for a person to refuse to obey a state law mandating participation in an abortion procedure. If a state requires a licensed medical practitioner to perform an abortion or to assist in its performance there is no ‘right of conscience’ escape clause.” Engelmayer rejected assertions that a patient in the 26 states that have laws...

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday declined to take the case of a public school teacher who required her students to recite the Islamic "conversion prayer" or receive a failing grade. The Thomas More Law Center is defending Caleigh Wood, a Christian student in 11th grade at La Plata High School in La Plata, Maryland. Wood refused to deny her faith "by making a written profession of the Muslim conversion prayer known as the shahada – 'There is no god by allah and Muhammad is the messenger of allah,'" Thomas More said. The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled...

The culture of death brooks no dissent. In Canada, doctors have been ordered to bend the knee. Here’s the story: The Canadian Charter (Constitution) guarantees “freedom of conscience and religion” — a stronger and more explicit protection of religious liberty than our First Amendment. After the Supreme Court created a right to euthanasia, Ontario passed a law requiring doctors to kill legally eligible patients who want to die or provide an “effective referral” if they have moral objections — i.e., procure a doctor known by the dissenter to be willing to euthanize patients. Referring Equals Complicity Catholic and other religious...

I was wondering, when was it that liberals become society’s conscience, particularly in the United States? I have become acutely aware that liberals try to make me feel acutely guilty of not believing in their madness. It is unrelenting and it is completely ruining the kids. What exactly is so right about gay marriage and transgenderism? I don’t see it. Where is the proof or even the scientific logic of global warming? It’s nowhere and the requisite guilt for the end of the world is supposed to be what I deserve. The world has truly gone mad.

Bishop Against Francis: "Conscience" Cannot Excuse Sin Madison Bishop Robert Morlino has criticises the idea [advocated by Pope Francis] that "conscience" can dispense from following Church teaching. Talking to EWTN’s Raymond Arroyo (August 23), he said, “Too often people have excused themselves from sinful behaviours by saying, ‘I’m following my conscience and that’s the highest law.” For Morlino a contraposition of the objective law and the subjective understanding of it is “the linchpin of so many problems since the [Second] Vatican Council”. Morlino further accuses “a desire to keep abuses away from homosexuality and move it towards paedophilia”. He points...

Though I have written several articles about Pope Francis’s post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (AL), I am repeatedly struck anew, as time goes on, by its inexorably destructive implications. Despite AL’s generally good summary of Catholic teaching on marriage and the family, its moral subjectivism ultimately undermines not only the truths affirmed in the document, but also those of Catholic morality in general. And once truth is in doubt, there is no longer any stable basis for trust. AL certainly undermines the trust of Catholics entering marriage, as they become aware that in many countries and dioceses, perhaps even their...

WASHINGTON, DC, April 12, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – “If you insist upon the commandments, it’s like throwing stones at people.”   Famed Catholic author Janet Smith, speaking to a group gathered at The Catholic University of America (CUA), in Washington, DC on April 5, warned of new challenges to the Church’s teaching against contraception that will arise in coming years, centered around the concepts of conscience and discernment. In particular, theologians who Smith identifies as “discerners” will focus not on the authority of conscience as it is traditionally understood, but on a “very different understanding of what the conscience is. This is...

During Easter, not only did a German priest and monk declare that he could well imagine a female pope in the future, but Cardinal Christoph Schönborn – whom Pope Francis has called a “great theologian” and to whom the pope entrusted the public interpretation of Amoris Laetitia – gave an interview in which he appears to express the belief that a future ecumenical council could approve of the ordination of women to the priesthood. In an 1 April interview given to a group of Austrian journalists – prominently to some from the Austrian newspaper Die Presse, but also from the Salzburger Nachrichten...

Teenage killer Morgan Leppert laughs in disturbing police tapes as she admits to murdering disabled elderly manViewers heard the chilling laughter of child murderer Morgan Leppert in police interview tapes from ITV documentary Children Who Kill. The show saw presenter Susanna Reid meet Leppert, who was labelled the ‘blue eyed devil’ aged 15 when she was convicted of the murder of an elderly disabled man back in 2008. The 62-year-old man named James Stewart, was stabbed multiple times in his Florida home with metal rods and a knife, before being suffocated with a plastic bag by the teenager and her...

Retiring Planned Parenthood CEO Cecile Richards urged abortion supporters to "fight back against the moralists who threaten women's freedom." She pointed to "a few bright spots we've seen in recent weeks that should encourage our faith in the ultimate victory of our cause." "First there was the virtually unanimous vote by House Democrats against requiring abortionists to render medical aid to infants who survive the procedure," Richards recounted. "This nonsensical Republican attempt to impose their own notion of what they call 'common human decency' would completely negate the purpose of the procedure. The mother came for the express purpose of...

Is Pope Francis a "Atheist" according Pope John Paul II? "When mortal men try to live without God, they infallibly succumb to megalomania or eratomania or both. The raised fist or the raised phallus; Nietzsche or D. H. Lawrence" (Malcolm Muggeridge) Certain teachings in Amoris Laetitia are exactly the opposite of Church doctrine in Familiaris Consortio and "explicitly atheist" according to Veritatis Splendor. Father Raymond J. de Souza said: "Veritatis Splendor, entitled 'Lest the Cross of Christ Be Emptied of Its Power,' warns precisely against the view that the demands of the moral life are too difficult and cannot be lived...

WHY PARAGRAPH 301 OF AMORIS LAETITIA IS SO PROFOUNDLY TROUBLING “When it is a matter of the moral norms prohibiting intrinsic evil, there are no privileges or exceptions for anyone. It makes no difference whether one is the master of the world or the “poorest of the poor” on the face of the earth. Before the demands of morality we are all absolutely equal.” (Saint Pope John Paul II, Veritatis Splendor, no. 96) Here is the very troubling passage from Amoris Laetitia (no. 301) which clearly suggests that a person can be in a “concrete situation” where he has no choice but to...

President Donald Trump said he’d promote commonsense policies that would “Make America Great Again” and would stand up to politically correct bullying from the left.So why isn’t he doing that in the case of religious freedom?Twice now, he has failed to stand up for commonsense policy on religious liberty when liberal opponents lashed out against it.Back in February, he caved to the protests of liberal special interest groups as he declined to issue an executive order on religious liberty that had been leaked to hostile press.And earlier today, he issued an executive order on “free speech and religious liberty” that...

FULL TITLE: The Little Sisters of the Poor Case Isn't About Contraception. It's About When the Government Can Force You to Violate Your Conscience. The real issue is more foundational, however: When an American says a law or regulation infringes on his conscience, under what circumstances should he be exempted from it, and under what circumstances should he be forced to comply anyway? It's a tricky question to which there isn't a fully established answer (though I've ruminated on the topic before). As Justice Stephen Breyer put it today, "I'm [still] trying to find the distinction between those things we...

(Full title):Black Delegate Rips Movement to Unbind Delegates: I'm Only As Good As My Word And Ask The Same Of You After the RNC Rules Committee decided to vote down a measure to unbind delegates using the "conscience clause" via a voice vote, a delegate made a plea for unity. Conversely, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) made an impassioned plea for delegates to vote their conscience. "I think our elections are important," Lee said to the committee. "They are essential and fundamental. Delegates traditionally have been considered honorbound to follow the decision of their state and they overwhelmingly have done so....

The amendment to unbind delegates and allow them to vote "their conscience" has been soundly defeated in the RNC Rules Committee

The left has always had great admiration for the conscientious objector. I know something about that because I was a kid in the late 60s and early 70s when the Vietnam War was being fought. Some people refused to serve in the war because of their deeply held religious beliefs. To those on the right they were cowards. To those on the left they were heroes. As the son of a military officer I got one side of the story. As a student in the public schools I got the other. My teachers did their best to convince me there...

Like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho, psychopaths can be intelligent and charming, while hiding a lack of empathy. So given their ability to manipulate others, how easy it is for you to spot one? Self-professed psychopath Jacob Wells has revealed how he behaves in different situations and has listed questions that may help others identify whether they have any psychopathic traits - as well as recognise them in others.

Ironically, Beza found his "signal example"8 of how to deal with tyranny and resistance not so much in the work of early Calvinists as in the work of later Lutherans—particularly the Lutheran jurists and theologians who had drafted the Magdeburg Confession of 1550. The Magdeburg Confession was a major distillation of the most advanced Lutheran resistance theories of the day.9 The leaders of the small Saxon city of Magdeburg had drafted this Confession in response to the order of the Holy Roman Emperor to impose by civil law the uniform Catholic doctrines and liturgies being crafted by the Council of...