Free Republic

The economic indicators all show the economy is booming. Unemployment is at record lows. The stock market is seeing record highs. Wages are up, and taxes are down. Stifling regulations are being lifted. Everything seems to be working just fine. There is much truth in this perception of a boom. Part of this can be attributed to less government interference and taxation. Unnecessary government regulation and spending always hurt the economy. When markets are freer, profits tend to come galloping back. And much has galloped back. However, beneath the surface, major problems threaten the boom. These problems have long plagued...

The former Archbishop of Karaganda in Kazakhstan, Jan Lenga, has been banned from preaching and celebrating Mass by the Polish Church for describing Pope Francis as the antichrist and refusing to include him in prayers. "Canon Law empowers the local diocesan bishop to take disciplinary steps which might halt the spread of scandal among the faithful," Fr Artur Niemira, chancellor of the central Wloclawek diocese, said in a statement to Poland's Catholic Information Agency, KAI. "Archbishop Lenga is to refrain from delivering sermons and publicly conducting the liturgy. This same ban also applies to contacts with the media." The ruling...

Moscow, February 25, Interfax - Alexander Shchipkov, first deputy chairman of the Russian Orthodox Church's Department for Church, Society and Media Relations, has objected to plans to ban the consecration of certain types of weapons, including weapons of mass destruction. The Russian Orthodox Church's Inter-Council Presence has drawn up a draft document proposing that the consecration of any types of weapons whose use may cause the deaths of "an indefinite number of people," including "indiscriminate weapons and weapons of mass destruction," be banned. "An essential motive of the text of this document, in fact, separates a warrior from his weapon...

Milan, Italy, Feb 24, 2020 / 06:54 am (CNA).- Several Catholic dioceses in northern Italy have suspended Mass and other activities this week to help contain the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by coronavirus. The northern regions of Italy saw a dramatic uptick in coronavirus cases over the weekend, prompting some regions to suspend all events or gatherings of any form, in public or private. In response to the outbreak, dioceses in the area have taken various measures, including cancelling Masses and asking Catholics to receive the Eucharist only in the hand. Italian officials have also imposed quarantine...

Seattle, Wash., Feb 21, 2020 / 06:04 pm (CNA).- After students at a Catholic high school in Washington state staged protests in support of two teachers who resigned their posts in order to civilly marry their same-sex partners, the Archbishop of Seattle said that teachers in Catholic schools must live Catholic doctrine. “Pastors and church leaders need to be clear about the church’s teaching, while at the same time refraining from making judgments, taking into consideration the complexity of people’s lived situations. We are always called to compassion as we journey with our people. The end goal of walking together...

Bishop Joseph Zhu Baoyu, Bishop Emeritus of Nanyang, has recovered from coronavirus. At age 98, he is among the oldest infected patients to have recovered. Bishop Zhu was diagnosed with COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by coronavirus, on February 3. He was treated at a hospital in Nanyang, in China’s Henan province, and was said to be no longer infected on February 14. In mainland China the fatality rate from coronavirus is 2.3%, though that figure jumps to nearly 15% for those 80 years or older. In mainland China, the death toll of the coronavirus has reached 1,868, and more...

Hindu extremists brutally attacked a group of about 70 Christians, including children, as they traveled home from a national congress focused on praying for peace in India amid escalating persecution. According to Christian Solidarity Worldwide, three men on motorcycles attacked Christians traveling home from the Third National Congress of the Synod of Pentecostal Churches in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, on Feb 5. The men verbally threatened the passengers before smashing the windshields of the vehicles, causing injury to the driver and passengers, which included women, children and the elderly. Pastor Paul Raj, one of the passengers, immediately called the police, who...

Ven. Carlo Acutis is the ideal candidate for the patron saint of the internet. He created a database of Eucharistic miracles on a website so people could find out about them all while he was still a teenager. If you’ve seen a traveling exhibit with displays on different Eucharistic miracles, this is based right off his site. On Friday, Pope Francis approved a miracle in his case and this allows beatification to be scheduled. As he is the first saint to have extensively used the internet and the first saint who is most known for something he did online, I...

Synod votes to throw out more cautious 2045 net-zero targetTHE General Synod on Wednesday set a 2030 target for net zero carbon emissions for the Church of England, rejecting the recommended target of 2045. Members of the Synod voted narrowly for the more radical proposal for the C of E to be carbon-neutral in just ten years’ time. The proposal came in an amendment by Canon Professor Martin Gainsborough (Bristol), carried by 144 votes to 129, with ten abstentions. Canon Gainsborough said that he wanted to push the Church harder. His diocese had already committed itself to the 2030 date....

Says Hillary Clinton, John Kerry also have blood on their handsLAGOS, Nigeria (ChurchMilitant.com) - While former President Barack Obama is taking credit for the current surge in economic growth and job creation in the United States, a former Nigerian minister is blaming him and key members of his cabinet for the slaughter of Nigerian Christians at the hands of Islamist terrorist group Boko Haram. Femi Fani-Kayode, Nigeria's former Minister of Culture and Tourism, faults the Obama administration for backing 2015 presidential candidate Muhammadu Buhari, a Muslim. Buhari won the nation's presidency and afterward, Fani-Kayode said, went soft on Boko Haram....

The shrinking population affects the 'very existence of our country,' President Sergio Mattarella warns.ROME, Italy, February 20, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) ― Italy welcomed its smallest number of newborns in 2019, leading its president to foretell the country’s doom. “This is a problem that concerns the very existence of our country,” said Sergio Mattarella, 78. “The fabric of our country is weakening, and everything must be done to counter this phenomenon.” According to Italy’s national statistics agency, ISTAT, there were only 435,000 births in Italy last year, the lowest number ever recorded in the country, compared with 647,000 deaths. The number of...

During 2019, many Catholic churches were closed down for refusing to join the Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association. Even state-run churches are suppressed.Torn down as “illegal buildings”On December 29, 2019, the Religious Affairs Bureau of Qishan county, administered by the prefecture-level city of Baoji in the northwestern Shaanxi Province, ordered to demolish a Catholic church in Luojiazhuang village. The church refused to be registered by the state, and was therefore suppressed for “lacking proper permits.” A local believer told Bitter Winter that before Christmas, the church’s priest, having learned that the government wanted to demolish his church, went to negotiate with...

HARRISBURG — The Roman Catholic Diocese of Harrisburg filed for bankruptcy Wednesday, becoming the first diocese in the state to seek protection from financial claims in the aftermath of a 2018 grand jury report that revealed decades of sexual abuse and cover-up by the church’s top leaders. And, said a lawyer for the diocese, it’s not likely to be the last. Citing the fallout from that probe and recent court decisions that opened new avenues for some victims with time-barred claims to sue, attorney Matt Haverstick said Harrisburg, like each of the state’s eight other Catholic dioceses, faces the prospect...

Ignatius Youssef slams West's 'Machiavellian opportunism' on migrationROME (ChurchMilitant.com) - The Syrian patriarch of Antioch is calling on Muslim-majority countries to resettle Islamic refugees and is excoriating Western religious leaders for their "political correctness" on immigration and the persecution of Christians. "Since there are Arab countries — with a Muslim majority — that have financial resources in billions and vast uninhabited territories, why not settle the refugees from the Middle East, thereby giving them temporary accommodation pending a political solution which will facilitate their return home?" asks His Beatitude Ignatius Youssef III Younan. "These countries have the space, money and...

His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, the head of the Moscow Patriarchate’s Department for External Church Relations, supports the recent statements from President Vladimir Putin in favor of the traditional understanding of the family as the union of a man and a woman. “As for ‘parent # 1’ and ‘parent # 2, I have already said publicly once before, and I will repeat again: as long as I am President, we will not have parents one and two—we will have a father and mother,” the President said on February 13 at a meeting with the working group on preparing amendments...

* Wang Yi met his counterpart Archbishop Paul Gallagher in Munich on Friday in a rare meeting between the two sides * Holy See seeking to renew or formalise agreement on appointing bishops, source saysA historic meeting between the foreign ministers of China and the Vatican in Munich last week was initiated and approved by Pope Francis, according to two sources familiar with the arrangements. The Pope was “eager” to use the talks to explore “renewal or formalisation” of a provisional deal reached in 2018 to allow the Vatican to appoint bishops pre-approved by Beijing, one of the sources...

Clerics must choose between prison or excommunicationMELBOURNE, Victoria, Australia (ChurchMilitant.com) - Priests in the Australian state of Victoria must now choose between being jailed for keeping the seal of confession or being excommunicated for breaking it. A state law took effect on Monday that forces priests in the state to report knowledge of child sexual abuse gained from the sacrament of confession or face up to three years in prison. Victoria's Attorney-General Jill Hennessy asserts that priests can no longer use the confessional seal as a reason for not reporting child abuse. "From [Monday], our promise to put the safety...

Join Freepers throughout the world to pray for PRESIDENT TRUMP and VICE-PRESIDENT PENCE and for AMERICA: All Levels of Government, Family, Military, Business, Education, Churches, Health Care Systems and the Media. This is the confidence we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us. —1 John 5:14 Forum threads labeled [Prayer] are closed to debate of any kind. Please join us in prayer for our nation.

* "We sought to inform the Court of Appeal that many minority women, especially Muslim women, are deceived or coerced by abusive husbands into only having a religious marriage, which deprives them of their financial rights when the marriage breaks down...." — Southall Black Sisters, an advocacy group for South Asian women, February 14, 2020. * In February 2018, an independent review of the application of Sharia law in England and Wales...recommended changes to the Marriage Act 1949 and the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 that would require Muslims to conduct civil marriages before or at the same time as the...

Masonic Grand Master hails pronouncement as breakthrough in reconciliationVIENNA (ChurchMilitant.com) - Eight popes over 200 years in a barrage of 20 legal interdicts have condemned Freemasonry, pronouncing automatic excommunication against any Catholic who becomes a member of a masonic lodge. Now, a new book by an official of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue is claiming that a practicing Catholic can simultaneously be a Freemason and that the penalty of excommunication may "certainly not" be applied to "Catholic Freemasons." Father Michael Heinrich Weninger launched his 500-page study Loge und Altar: Über die Aussöhnung von Katholischer Kirche und regulärer Freimaurerei (Lodge...