Free Republic

The Catholic Church has taken a rather strong stand in opposing the Obama administration's requirement that the church provide contraceptive medicine and treatments as a required component of Obamacare. Apparently the administration is in accord with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi in shrugging off concerns about the "conscience thing" that has forced the Catholic Church to denounce this policy from the pulpit during Mass on this past Sunday all over America. The government is requiring the hierarchy of the Catholic Church, and the congregants who are devout Catholics, to fund such contraceptive medicine for all lay employees of Catholic grammar...

The decision last week by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to reject the appeals of scores of religious leaders and retain a very narrow “religious” exemption from Obamacare’s so-called contraception mandate has ignited an uproar among Catholic leaders, as well it should — because it’s hard to fathom a government dictate more offensive than this one. Here’s how we got where we are: Obamacare includes within its massive delegation of power to the federal government the authority to define what constitutes “preventive services” that must be covered by all health-insurance plans sold and purchased in the United States,...

Confession – Is It Still Necessary? July 28th, 2009 by Gary ZimakOne of the harsh realities facing the Catholic Church is the fact that many of her members no longer receive the sacrament of Confession on a regular basis. For one reason or another, many Catholics don’t feel the need to go to Confession. Let’s look at some of the common objections and discuss why the sacrament of Confession is still as relevant today as it was when Jesus instituted it 2000 years ago. “I confess my sins directly to Christ. Why do I need to go through a ‘middle...

WASHINGTON, D.C., November 22, 2011 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi blasted Catholics for fighting for the right not to perform or fund abortions, describing their abhorrence for supporting abortions as “this conscience thing,” in remarks to the Washington Post. Last month, during a debate in the House over a bill to stop abortion funding in the health care bill and to strengthen conscience rights on abortion, Pelosi had described the bill as “savage,” claiming that it would allow doctors to let women “die on the floor” because they could refuse to perform an abortion. In her...

Sarah Palin's true role will be revealed in her next contribution to conservatism. The first token will be seen in her participation in primaries on behalf of conservatives against rinos. After the election, assuming a Republican president and a Republican Senate, look for Sarah Palin to assume the role of the conscience of conservatism. When Sarah Palin burst onto the national scene she was reflexively and viscerally loathed by the left. The left's reaction was visceral in the sense that it was not cerebral. They loathed Sarah Palin, they could do no other, and they did not even know why....

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Two people have been charged with burglary after police said they stole property but later returned it because they felt bad. According to arrest records, 24-year-old Eugene Carrier Jr. admitted to police that he unlawfully entered a home on Driftwood Drive and stole property. Police said 21-year-old Katherine Hunt waited outside. Carrier gave the stolen items to Hunt and they drove away together, police said. Hunt said that a few days later, they returned the stolen items to the victim because they felt bad about what they had done, according to arrest records.

Adult First Confession Candidates (preparing for Confirmation/First Communion), you need to go to confession sometime this Lent, that is, before the Easter Vigil. The Elect (preparing for Baptism), you don’t have to go to Confession this Lent, because Baptism itself washes away all sins. But sometime after Baptism, you should think about going to Confession, since regular Confession is an excellent habit to get into. Baptism --- by God’s grace -- makes you clean. Confession--- by God’s grace--- helps you stay that way. 1. Absolutely commit to doing it. Set a date. Put it on your calendar (in ink!) And...

Santorum is going to get a lot of heat for this. When the Islamic supremacist tools in the mainstream media challenge him on it, he should ask them if they think the death penalty for apostates, stoning for adultery, amputation of the hand for theft, the denial of the freedom of speech, and institutionalized second-class status for women and non-Muslims is not evil. They will then, following some smooth Islamic supremacist deceiver, claim that those things are not part of Sharia; Santorum should then challenge them to name one Muslim country that has ever implemented Sharia without implementing those measures,...

Booklist review of "Conscious Dreaming: A Spiritual Path for Everyday Life," by Robert Moss, on Amazon.com: This is more and better than just a book about how to remember and understand dreams, although it is that kind of book and as good as any such recently published. Moss covers all the expected terrain, from how to train the mind to recall its nightly narratives, through how to unravel meaning from them, to how to start and sustain a dream group. But his book excels because he extends its purview to include shamanic dreaming, dreams of dead loved ones, healing dreams,...

In this the children of God and the children of the devil are manifest: Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God, nor is he who does not love his brother. 11 For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another, 12 not as Cain who was of the wicked one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his works were evil and his brother’s righteous.( I John 2:10-12)Cain and Abel were brothers. Both of them were strict Monotheistic worshippers also. But that is where the similarity...

A brush of idealism paints the 1st-century church as a nostalgic example of community and perfection. The congregation in Corinth, however, was anything but ideal. Rather than sharing their possessions, the Corinthians would sue each other to get more stuff. Rather than eating meals together, the Corinthians would cut in line during communion to get drunk off the wine. And rather than communal singing, the Corinthians had communal sex. I’m A.J. Hamilton with Mars Hill Church in Seattle. In this sermon series, Pastor Mark Driscoll teaches on the letter known as 1 Corinthians, which the Apostle Paul wrote to untangle...

A woman, who helped a barbershop owner steal an Adenium plant from a family 20 years ago, bought an Adenium plant and secretly returned it to the family together with an apologising note out of deep regret. The incident took place in Aulong New Village on 6 October 2010. According to plant receiver Wu Jiajia, he found a plant and a note left in front of the backdoor of his house when he returned home with his wife and children. In the note, the person who returned the plant wrote that she was 11 years old and was working in...

This afternoon, less than two weeks before the start of a civil rights trial in Tacoma federal court, attorneys for the State of Washington told a federal judge that the State would seek to create new rules for pharmacists with conscientious objections. The new regulations would give the plaintiffs in the lawsuit–the owners of Ralph’s Thriftway pharmacy and two pharmacists–what they’ve wanted all along: the right to refuse to stock or dispense Plan B (the so-called “morning after pill”) based on their conscientious objection.This is an enormous about-face for the State, which has for several years maintained that it had...

What is the impact of the current forms of gathering and transmitting information from person to person? Can people be affected by communications they don't use, or even know how to use? There were five of us around a table in church this morning. All of us used the internet at least somewhat. Most of us did not use Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. Our uses of the photo and video capacities of this generation of cell phones, fell someplace in the middle. But with some thought, the answer was clear. Whether or not we use these means of communication, they...

A heroic homeless man, stabbed after saving a Queens woman from a knife-wielding attacker, lay dying in a pool of blood for more than an hour as nearly 25 people indifferently strolled past him, a shocking surveillance video obtained by The Post reveals. Some of the passers-by paused to stare at Hugo Alfredo Tale-Yax last Sunday morning and others leaned down to look at his face. He had jumped to the aid of a woman attacked on 144th Street at 88th Road in Jamaica at 5:40 a.m., was stabbed several times in the chest and collapsed as he chased his...

Featured Term (selected at random):DOUBTFUL CONSCIENCE A state of mind when it cannot certainly decide for or against a course of action and leaves the person unsure about the morality of what one is to do, or what one may have done. One sign of a doubtful conscience is that it gives rise to a positive judgment with a prudent fear of being wrong, or more commonly to a negative judgment in which the person does not know whether an act is lawful or not. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal...

Wow. Wow. Wow. Not a surprise "Wow." But like "wow" is Senate candidate Martha Coakley so politically unaware that she just said what all those liberals actually think about religious people. Martha Coakley said on the radio that she's against conscience protections and then added in answer to a question about Catholics in particular: "you can have religious freedom but you probably shouldn’t work in an emergency room.” So what she's saying is that you can believe whatever you want but you have to do what the government tells you to do. So you can have your religion as long...

The following YouTube clip is shocking audio of Massachusetts Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate, Martha Coakley, arrogantly informing Catholics (and, by extension, other Christian believers who might wish to exercise their religious rights of conscience), “You can have religious freedom, you probably shouldn’t work in the emergency room.” [video goes here - view at source link] Attorney General Coakley, with all due respect to her office, is wrong. Her statement mischaracterizes the law and, if applied, would amount to unlawful religious discrimination. Religious freedom means much more than believers merely being free to voluntarily segregate themselves from certain professions...

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi / Archbishop George Niederauer San Francisco, Calif., Jan 13, 2010 / 05:46 pm (CNA).- Archbishop George Niederauer responded today to Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) recent comments that she has “some concerns about the Church's position respecting a woman's right to choose.” Justifying her decision to support abortion by citing her free will “is entirely incompatible with Catholic teaching,” the archbishop insisted.Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi told Newsweek’s Eleanor Clift in a December 21, 2009 interview that she disagrees with the Church on certain issues but considers herself a “practicing Catholic.” “I have...