Free Republic

South Korea has one of the highest rates of abortion in the world, even though abortion is technically illegal there except in a few rare circumstances. According to official government figures, there are 340,000 abortions each year, although one parliamentarian has estimated that there may be as many as 1.5 million. At the same time, Korea's birth rate is the second-lowest in the world – 1.19 births per woman -- and some Koreans fear that their very survival as a nation is in doubt. That is the background for a courageous decision by a 50-year-old Seoul obstetrician and gynaecologist, Dr...

Abortion clinic director becomes a pro-life advocate By Valerie SchmalzAbortion clinic director becomes a pro-life advocate Former Planned Parenthood director converted during 40 Days for Life after witnessing an abortion After years as a volunteer and employee, Abby Johnson walked away from her job as director of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Bryan/College Station, Texas, Oct. 6, during a prayer vigil by 40 Days for Life. Johnson, 29, first began working as a clinic escort as a student at Texas A & M University, after a Planned Parenthood employee recruited her at a college volunteer fair. But assisting with...

Thursday November 12, 2009 Interview: Former Gay Youth Leader Re-Emerges to Tell His Dramatic Conversion Story By Patrick B. CraineNovember 11, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Two years ago Michael Glatze sent shockwaves through the homosexualist establishment when he declared publicly that he had left his life as a prominent homosexual activist, become Christian, and embraced "normal human sexuality."However, after being subjected to intense criticism and ridicule following his conversion, Glatze decided to "go inside," "be silent," and "process" for a time, but now says he feels compelled to share his story anew. In an interview with LifeSiteNews.com (LSN), Glatze said that, far...

Just got hold of the latest issue of the magazine my old alma mater in Spain sends me regularly. A feature about a movie actor, now also a producer, immediately got my attention. First, a magazine that tries to be serious in character would normally not talk about actors and celebrities. Second, though I’ve heard of the story before in a tangential way, I thought it would just have a short shelf life, just a flash in the pan, you know. In short, the article broke my guiding principles. It deserved to be read. And I did. Now, I feel...

Monday November 2, 2009 Director of Planned Parenthood at 40 Days for Life Birthplace Resigns after Watching Abortion Ultrasound Planned Parenthood seeks restraining order By Kathleen GilbertBRYAN, Texas, November 2, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The director of the Texas Planned Parenthood abortion mill where the 40 Days for Life campaign began has resigned, saying she experienced a conversion after watching an ultrasound video of a child being killed by abortion."I just thought I can't do this anymore, and it was just like a flash that hit me and I thought that's it," said Abby Johnson in an interview with local...

Catholic Spain Has a New Herald: Juan Manuel de Prada From acclaimed author to staunch apologist for the Church and the pope, including in "L'Osservatore Romano." His is one of the many stories of conversion from unbelief to the Christian faith, in Europe. Against progressive "tyranny" by Sandro Magister ROME, October 12, 2009 – For a few days now, Italian bookstores have been selling a collection of interviews with converts to the Catholic faith, some of whom are very prominent: from Jean-Claude Guillebaud of France to Janne Haaland Matlary of Norway, former deputy foreign minister of her country and an...

The following true story of Claude Newman took place in Mississippi in 1944. The account was told by Father O’Leary, a priest from Mississippi, who was directly involved with the events. He has left for posterity an audio recording it. Claude Newman was a negro man who worked the fields for a landowner. He had married when he was 17 years old to a woman of the same age. One day, two years later, he was out plowing the fields. Another worker ran to tell Claude that his wife was screaming from the house. Immediately Claude ran into his house...

I was about as cold as I’d ever been. The Midwest was in the midst of a bitter winter in February, 1959. The wind was punishing, trees were freezing up and snapping, and the little yellow school bus I was riding in with Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper had been breaking down. After our "Winter Dance Party Tour" appearance in Duluth, Minnesota, our bus broke down again. Buddy had had enough. He talked the club manager into chartering a plane to fly the headliners to our next show in Fargo, North Dakota, and tried to recruit us...

I am writing to make the announcement that I am becoming a Roman Catholic along with my wife Rhea and our six children. I realise that this decision is going to make some really happy, some very sad and others possibily angry. But, I have made the decision with the deepest sense of integrity and by conscience. I would like to share a bit of my faith journey though there are many gaps here, it is descriptive of my heart over the past few months. This is not particularly an academic account of what I have done in my...

Former House speaker and Republican überstrategist Newt Gingrich is off to Europe next week to shoot a documentary on Pope John Paul II's 1979 trip to Poland and how it helped to lay the groundwork for bringing down the Soviet Union. The film, Nine Days That Changed the World, is slated for release this fall.The trip will take Gingrich and his wife, Callista, to Poland and to Rome for the first time since he converted to Roman Catholicism in March.I caught up with Gingrich this morning and asked if he expected this trip to be different from previous visits to...

‘Unshakable’ Rationalist Blogged Her Way Into the ChurchJennifer Fulwiler “always thought it was obvious that God did not exist.” Fulwiler grew up a content atheist. Having a profound respect for knowledge, particularly scientific knowledge, Fulwiler was convinced that religion and reason were incompatible. Not surprisingly, she was also emphatically anti-Christian and, especially, anti-Catholic. “Catholic beliefs seemed bizarre and weird,” she says. Fulwiler would have been astonished to know that she and Joe Fulwiler, her husband, would come to embrace those “bizarre,” “weird” beliefs. On Easter 2007, they entered the Catholic Church with deep joy and a sense of coming home...

Earlier this week the New York Times dropped the news that Newt Gingrich will soon become Catholic (which I had rumored before), and I blogged about it. I can now add some more details. Mr. Gingrich has regularly been seen attending Mass at the National Shrine here in Washington DC (inculding once by yours truly). He'll be entering the Church on Sunday, March 29th in DC.

ROME (CNS) -- If using dolls to practice the baptismal ritual is a humbling experience for seminarians, one can imagine what it was like for someone who already had baptized hundreds of babies. Father Jeffrey N. Steenson, the former Episcopal bishop of the Rio Grande, prepared for his ordination to the Catholic priesthood with seminarians from Rome's Pontifical North American College.

JORDAN TIMES 8 Feb.'09:"Abu Dhabi to pay circumcision for converts" DUBAI (AFP) - Social security in the wealthy emirate of Abu Dhabi will cover the cost of circumcising men who convert to Islam, Al Bayan daily reported Saturday. The health authority in the capital of the United Arab Emirates said the government-backed insurance firm, Daman, has included circumcision operations in existing insurance policies for new Muslims, the paper said. Converts will have to present a certificate, issued by an Abu Dhabi court, attesting to their conversion. Authorities in the UAE, where expatriates represent more than 80 per cent of an...

Giuseppe Vacca, director of the Gramsci International Institute said that Gramsci’s conversion “wouldn’t be a scandal and wouldn’t change a thing,” because in fact his method of cultural hegemony continues to be employed by feminist, pro-abortion and homosexual groups.

Welcome to A Muslim Journey to Hope website Muslim Journey now airs on INI the following days:Thursdays @ 8:00 London time, Fridays @ 8:00  Sydney Time Thursdays @ 23:30 London time, Fridays @ 23:30  Sydney Time Saturdays @ 15:00 London time, Sundays @ 15:00  Sydney Time This web site and our television program are brought to you by people whose lives have been changed by the hope we have found because of the love of God and the truth about Jesus Christ. This hope is available to everyone, and we want to share that same hope with you.On this...

This former Muslim who bears the new name of “Christian” has formed a new Political Party to help Europe. This Party will put forth an entire slate of candidates in the European Union elections next year. The Party is called “Protagonists for Christian Europe”. It is explicitly and unapologetically committed to promoting and defending Europe’s Christian values and the Western culture which was informed by and built upon them. Magdi Allam openly declares that these values are the path to true and authentic freedom for all men and women. He also asserts that they are under a fierce assault by...

In describing his conversion, Adasevic “dreamed about a beautiful field full of children and young people who were playing and laughing, from 4 to 24 years of age, but who ran away from him in fear. A man dressed in a black and white habit stared at him in silence. The dream was repeated each night and he would wake up in a cold sweat. One night he asked the man in black and white who he was. ‘My name is Thomas Aquinas,’ the man in his dream responded. Adasevic, educated in communist schools, had never heard of the Dominican...

The Vatican has revealed that Antonio Gramsci, the founder of Italian Communism and an icon of the Left, reverted to Roman Catholicism on his deathbed..

Pope Benedict’s choice to publicly baptize the most prominent Muslim in Italy, Egyptian-born Magdi Allam, highlights a quiet worldwide exodus from Islam. In recent years, millions have moved on. With this high-profile action, Pope Benedict demonstratively blesses this massive conversion from the highest levels of the Church. Interviewed by al-Jazeera in 2006, Ahmad al-Qataani, leader of the Companions Lighthouse for the Science of Islamic Law in Libya, explains the decline: Islam used to represent … Africa’s main religion and there were 30 African languages that used to be written in Arabic script. The number of Muslims in Africa has diminished...