Free Republic

I'm not Catholic, but I seriously doubt that is possible given the person he was. He and I didn't agree often, but he wasn't an evil man by any means. So why then would a representative of the Vatican News Service say this is the Pope?

IN a small flat in Damascus, a young man in jeans and T-shirt draws frequently on a Gauloises cigarette as he describes how he dressed his brother in a suicide belt and watched him blow up some American soldiers at a drinks stall in Iraq. The young man calls himself Ahmed. He is 23 and he has a degree in chemistry. He knows all about explosives. Last year, he says coolly, he took 15kg of TNT, packed it into pouches with some nails and strapped the bomb to his 19-year-old brother’s waist. There was never any doubt that it would...

A Poem Fit for Our Times – ‘Me and My Friends’ Special to LifeSiteNews.com by Dr. John B. Shea, October 3, 2007 'Me and My Friends' For me and my friends To follow the trends Is simply a matter of choice Autonomy rules That all but poor fools Speak loud and speak clear with one voice Some talk of abortion With warning and caution But science has shown very well That it's safe and its normal That it's healthy and moral And that it sends no one to hell Some say that to toke Or to drink or to smoke...

Lovelle Svart woke up Friday knowing it was the day she would die. There was much to do. Her family and closest friends would be gathering at 11 a.m. in her mother's apartment in the Southwest Portland assisted-living center where they both lived. She directed trips to the grocery store and even called AAA to jump-start the dead battery of her 2006 Scion. She double-checked delivery of food platters from Fred Meyer: turkey sandwiches, strawberries and grapes, pretzels, almonds and sparkling water. There would be pink roses on the dining table and a boombox in the corner to play music,...

A stranger stood at the gate of Hell And the Devil himself had answered the bell He looked him over from head to toe And said “My friend, I’d like to know What you have done in the line of sin To entitle you to come within?” Then Franklin D. with his usual guile Stepped forth and flashed his toothy smile. “When I took over in ’33, A nation’s faith was mine”, said he “I promised this and I promised that, And I calmed them down with a fireside chat. I spent their money on fishing trips And I fished...

One night while diving for lobster on the island of Mauritius, an Australian named Ian McCormick was stung on his forearm by what local Creole fishermen call "invisibles": extraordinarily poisonous but hard to see "five-box" jellyfish, in the nomenclature of the trade. Medics were called -- urgently. It was an emergency if ever there is an emergency. "Found in the waters off northern Australia, the box jellyfish Chironex fleckeri is not the only marine invertebrate to use venom, but it is the possessor of arguably the most lethal venom in the world," notes one expert. "In the past half...

SAVANNAH, Georgia, SEPT. 17, 2007 (Zenit.org).- Those who don't believe in hell are living with a very dangerous kind of wishful thinking, or a comfortable fantasy, says author Paul Thigpen. In this interview with ZENIT, Thigpen discusses his new book "My Visit to Hell," published by Creation House. Thigpen is editor of The Catholic Answer, director of the Stella Maris Center for Faith and Culture, and an award-winning journalist and best-selling author of 34 books. Q: You have written a novel, "My Visit to Hell," about just that -- a young man's visit to hell. What prompted this? Thigpen: The...

TEHRAN (AFP) — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on Sunday lashed out at his Western foes which demand Iran halt its sensitive nuclear activities, saying they were "racing to hell". "The Iranian people have climbed over difficult mountain passes on their path of progress. The enemies need to step aside from our path and give up their satanic ideas," he said, according to the semi-official Mehr news agency. "One or two countries are refusing to accept that Iran is now mastering nuclear technology ... Some countries are racing towards hell. But this makes us sad and, for the good of their people,...

Now I'm not a supporter of Mitt Romney, however I do think he deserves an equal chance to be elected President without being discriminated against. I would want Mitt to lose perhaps to Fred Thompson or Rudi, but Mitt should be given the chance to lose fairly, not by unfairly targetting his religion. Hindu, Catholic, Protestant, Muslim (i.e., Wafa Sultan is an example of a Muslim woman braver than any of us in the War on Terror), etc. Give each man or woman a fair chance as individuals... that's what the US consistution and this forum is all about. I...

Recent years have provided plenty of church scandals, but an unlikely one has occurred in the Bible belt. A prominent Tulsa, Okla., minister was scandalized not by sex or embezzlement, but by his belief in hell. When Carlton Pearson began wondering if modern believers still need a medieval pit of fire, it cost him his congregation. Watch "Hell: Our Fear and Fascination" Friday on a special "20/20" at 10 p.m. EDT He shared pulpits with Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. He counseled presidents at the White House. And after the Oklahoma City bombing, he was called to lead the grieving...

One of my grandmother's favorite colloquialisms was: "If it looks like a duck,walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck; it's probably a duck." Let us begin exchanging the word "duck" for Muslim, since they have orchestrated the last 11,000 terrorist acts around Planet Earth. England's Prime Minister may want to avoid angering Muslims (the audacity!) but the 3 Middle Eastern physicians dedicated to blowing up Scotland's Glasgow Airport this past week were...Muslim. Secular humanists and "mother ship" worshipers may not want to "offend" Muslims who slaughter non-Muslims daily somewhere on this planet,but since Muslims have butchered nearly 8...

Introduction No one really wants to talk about hell. The person who finds some kind of satisfaction in exploring its horrors must have a problem. Many do not wish to believe that some will suffer eternal torment. One survey over ten years ago indicated that 58% Methodists, 60% Episcopalians, 54% Presbyterians, 35% American Baptists, 22% American Lutherans deny it is a specific place after death. It is not difficult to understand why some choose to believe there is no such thing as eternal torment. After all, such a fact would have dramatic implications! The cults have generally tended to distort...

A woman who claimed that a family pet mutilated her infant son's genitals was taken into police custody this morning, shortly before a protective custody hearing in the case began. Katherine "Katie" Nadal, 25, is charged with injury to a child, a felony offense. The former Anahuac High School cheerleader was led away in handcuffs by two plainclothes Houston Police Department officers at 9:30 a.m. Nadal, a former cocktail waitress now unemployed, had arrived at the Harris County Juvenile Justice Center with her mother and her attorney, Itze Soliz Matthews. Police said Nadal did not seem that surprised by the...

Despite optimistic name, Palestinian-only road a nightmare B. Michael Published: 05.09.07, 15:18 / Israel Opinion Bir Naballah is a cage. It may be called “The Bir Naballah enclave” in the occupier’s clean language, but this cannot change the facts. It is a cage. Perhaps a compound. Another atrocity that emerged from the winding route of the separation fence. In the past, the village was practically a Jerusalem suburb, as were the three neighboring villages. Today they are surrounded by bars and fences and concrete walls on every side, with only one gate connecting them to the outer world. This route...

The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington chemistry mid-term. Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant. One student, however, wrote the following: First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely...

<p>May 5, 2007 -- WASHINGTON - The White House yesterday unloaded a blast at Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for playing "presidential politics" with her plan to repeal the same authorization for the Iraq war that she voted for in 2002. White House spokesman Tony Fratto set the tone early yesterday, telling reporters that Clinton's Senate measure was "reckless" and "a political stunt." "It's not reflective of conditions on the ground; it's not reflective of the contributions of our troops. You can't, for example, ask al Qaeda in Iraq, are they going to end their operations on the same date. I guess that would be nice, but that's not the way it works," Fratto said. Deputy Press Secretary Dana Perino kept up the broadside during the afternoon White House press briefing. "What you saw was a little bit of presidential politics. And we might see more of it, but the president has a principled stand that he's not going to change," Perino said. Clinton spokesman Blake Zeff fired back: "Hillary Clinton wants to end the war. George Bush wants to escalate it." The former first lady yesterday introduced her measure to end Congress' approval for the war in Iraq as of Oct. 11. Clinton has been hammered by liberal voters for her 2002 vote authorizing the war.</p>

  Biden: Shove It Down His Throat

FoxNews reported today that while addressing a parish in a suburb of Rome, Pope Benedict XVI clarified his view of hell. The Pope said concerning hell, [it] “really exists and is eternal, even if nobody talks about it much any more,” According to reports from the Vatican this ?straightforward? language is in effort to eliminate confusion pending an upcoming release of the new Catholic catechism. One might wonder about confusion from a church that proposes that its doctrine does not change. However, even the casual Catholic should remember the last Pontiff?s less literal view of hell. Speaking of hell, Pope...

Technical examinations of the surveys indicated that the British marines have been arrested in Iranian territorial waters, an official said on Wednesday. "We have determined from the GPS surveys that the British marines had entered Iranian territory and we have offered the British officials with feed-back to that effect," he said. "A number of UK marines confirmed that they were in Iran's territorial waters when they were arrested by Iranian coast guards, and expressed regret at the incident," he added. 15 British marines were arrested in Iran's territorial waters in the Persian Gulf on Friday. Iran has announced that it...

Hell is a place where sinners really do burn in an everlasting fire, and not just a religious symbol designed to galvanise the faithful, the Pope has said. Addressing a parish gathering in a northern suburb of Rome, Benedict XVI said that in the modern world many people, including some believers, had forgotten that if they failed to ?admit blame and promise to sin no more?, they risked ?eternal damnation ? the Inferno?. Hell ?really exists and is eternal, even if nobody talks about it much any more?, he said. The Pope, who as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was head of...