Free Republic

White Double “THREE SAINTS,” said our Lord to St. Bridget of Sweden, "have been more pleasing to me than all others: Mary my mother, John the Baptist, and Mary Magdalene." The Fathers tell us that Magdelene is a type of the Gentile Church called from the depth of sin to perfect holiness; and indeed, better than any other, she personifies both the wanderings and the love of the human race, espoused by the Word of God. Like the most illustrious characters of the law of grace, she has her antitype in past ages. Let us follow the history of...

White Simple OUR PASCHAL CALENDAR gives us three illustrious Virgins of the beautiful Italy. We have already kept the feast of the valiant Catharine of sienna; in a few days, we shall be honoring the memory of Angela de Merici, surrounded by her school-children; today, it is the fair lily of Florence, Magdalene de Pazzi, who embalms the whole Church with the fragrance of her name and intercession. She was the loving imitatrix of our Crucified Jesus; was it not just that she should have some share in the joy of his Resurrection? Magdalene de Pazzi was one of...

Harvard researcher Karen King today unveiled an ancient papyrus fragment with the phrase, “Jesus said to them, ‘My wife.’” The text also mentions “Mary,” arguably a reference to Mary Magdalene. The announcement at an academic conference in Rome is sure to send shock waves through the Christian world. The Smithsonian Channel will premiere a special documentary about the discovery on September 30 at 8 p.m. ET. And Smithsonian magazine reporter Ariel Sabar has been covering the story behind the scenes for weeks, tracing King’s steps from when a suspicious e-mail hit her in-box to the nerve-racking moment when she thought...

Editor's note: Dr. Tom Snyder contributed to this column. Dr. Ted Baehr is founder and publisher of MOVIEGUIDE®: A Family Guide to Movies and Entertainment and founder and chairman of the Christian Film & Television Commission. Dr. Tom Snyder is editor of MOVIEGUIDE®. © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com "The First Amendment provides for the separation of Church and State." "The Founding Fathers were all deists." "America is a racist country." "Cuba is a worker's paradise." "The Bible is contradictory." "Jesus Christ didn't die on the Cross." "The religious right in America wants to establish a totalitarian theocracy." "Modern homo sapiens are descended...

By the Christian History Institute “Blinding Ignorance does mislead us. O! Wretched mortals, open your eyes!” Leonardo Da Vinci, quoted in THE DA VINCI CODE, p. 231 In every age, there have been attacks on Jesus and the teaching of Scripture. Jesus has been an offense to the world from the very beginning. One recent attack is particularly beguiling because it is so entertaining. It’s author, Dan Brown, brashly assures us his account is based on the actual historical facts, but THE DA VINCI CODE paints either an uninformed or intentionally false picture of the early church. Herein, we want...

War on Christianity has been declared. On which side of the battle line will you stand? The movie version of Dan Brown's book, THE DA VINCI CODE, is now in theaters. Although the movie significantly waters down the unrelenting, anti-Christian attacks and virulent paganism and goddess worship of the novel, it promotes the book and contains enough falsehoods and scurrilous conjecture to distort the truth about Jesus Christ, the Bible, Christianity, and God. That, coupled with the book’s popularity and some Christians’ ignorance about their faith, leads us to believe that the movie, and the attention it draws, will increase...

Girls, girls, girls: Reviving religious sexDan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code is on solid historical ground when it claims that the Judeo-Christian tradition suppressed goddess worship and sexual mysticism. When St. Paul embarked on his missionary journeys in the first century, many of the West’s pagan temples were filled with prostitutes. At one time, for example, Corinth’s temple to goddess Aphrodite employed as many as a thousand prostitutes. Prostitution was considered socially respectable and religiously purifying. Adultery, on the other hand, was punishable because it was an economic offense ― taking someone else’s property (wife). Today, red light districts...

AUCKLAND, New Zealand (NZ Catholic) – She’s been denounced as a fallen woman, described as “a victim of mistaken identity for almost 20 centuries” and suggested as a likely candidate for “the patron of the slandered.” She’s been depicted in art and literature through the ages, and now – thanks to The Da Vinci Code – Mary Magdalene has emerged into the limelight again as the alleged wife of Christ and co-founder of an arcane dynasty at odds with the institutional church and its beliefs.To Dan Brown, author of the fictional The Da Vinci Code and no stranger to exaggerated...

THE CATHOLIC Church has not hidden from Christians the existence of the Gospel of Judas and other Gnostic writings. But scholars and certain sectors of the media have tended to use the controversial writings to forward their own agendas and discredit the Church, a Catholic biblical scholar has warned."There may be malice involved," said Spanish Dominican Fr. Angel Aparicio of the University of Santo Tomas. "They may be scholars, but they have their own agendas. I am so surprised the National Geographic is promoting this (Gospel of Judas)."Aparicio was referring to the National Geographic Society special aired on Palm Sunday...

Dan Brown’s novel, The DaVinci Code, is now a movie starring Tom Hanks and directed by Ron Howard. According to Brown, Jesus married Mary Magdalene, a fallen woman, had a son who moved to Gaul and fathered Frenchmen. Voile! Mary Magdalene is the chalice which contained the blood(line) of Christ. Oi vey! Proof? DaVinci’s painting, The Last Supper, of course! (The John portrayed by Leonardo is not a John but a Mary! Holy switcheroo!) According to Brown, an international religious cabal known as Opus Dei works desperately to keep the facts about this chalice and child secret. (One can’t blame...

Imagine that alongside Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, your New Testament includes a fifth Gospel where "seven Powers of Wrath" interrogate the human soul, accusing it of being a "human-killer" and "space-conqueror."Imagine further that the soul responds, "I was set loose from a world and in a type, from a type which is above and from the chain of forgetfulness in time" to enter silent rest during "the time of the due season of the aeon."And how about a Jesus who says "matter gave birth to a passion which has no Image" and that "there is no such thing as...

<p>As compelling in its mechanics as a prison drama, "The Magdalene Sisters" festers in its own blatantly anti-Catholic prejudice and raw bile.</p> <p>It purports to tell a series of parallel true stories against a background that has a factual basis.</p>