Free Republic

As winter approaches and the end of the liturgical year draws near, we ponder the passing quality of this world and the fading of its glories. Jesus’ words in today’s Gospel reading must surely have shocked, even horrified, His apostles. Let’s look at His stunning words and seek to apply them in our own life.In today’s Gospel, Jesus is at the top of the Mount of Olives with His apostles. From this vantage point, they look across the Kidron Valley to the magnificent Temple and all of Jerusalem spread out before them. The apostles marvel at the glorious beauty of...

Popular US priest urges bishops amid increasing COVID restrictions: ‘Fight for us!’ Msgr. Charles Pope mentioned nine things bishops should do to show the faithful that public worship is essential. November 10, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — In a blog post at the National Catholic Register, Msgr. Charles Pope appealed to the country’s bishops to fight more proactively for the right of the faithful to practice their faith publicly. He said their response to the lockdowns in the spring, as well as to continuing restrictions, have given many people the message that “[y]our physical health is more important than your spiritual health.”...

Many of you know Msgr. Charles Pope from his writings in the National Catholic Register and elsewhere. [here at FR]

On Monday July 27, 2020, Msgr. Charles Pope self-reported that he has tested positive for COVID-19 virus. He is recuperating and getting better each day. For the next two weeks, he and the other priests and seminarian that live in the rectory will be self-isolating as a precaution. We will be sure to keep you updated.

[Catholic Caucus] American priest to Pope: I’m ‘wearied from being scorned and demonized by you’ September 11, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – A widely-recognized and respected American priest has responded to Pope Francis’ recent remarks on “young, rigid priests,” saying in a social media post addressed to the Pope that he must “honestly and painfully say that I am wearied from being scorned and demonized by you.” On his way to Mozambique, the Argentinian pontiff stated that he considered it to be an honor to be attacked by Americans. In a prepared speech to the bishops of Mozambique on September 7,...

Were the Pagan Gods Actually Demons? The Scriptural View and Why It Matters Msgr. Charles Pope • July 6, 2016 • There is a tendency for us to simplistically dismiss the gods of the ancient world as mere figments of human imagination, but the biblical approach is a bit more complex than that.To be clear, at no time in the Scriptures were these gods ever acknowledged to be gods in any true sense of the word. There is only one God and He is the LORD.Consider the following text by St. Paul:For although there may be so-called gods in...

The Inclination to the Truth Msgr. Charles Pope • March 14, 2016 • In a recent post (Is There a Way Back to Undeniable Reality and Universally Binding Norms?) I discussed how we today tend to “live in our heads” a lot more so than did the people living in biblical times and even those who lived up to and including the High Middle Ages and the Scholastic Period. Prior to that time, the “real world” was taken to be largely self-evident. But in the late 13th and early 14th centuries, a school of thought later called “nominalism” began...

One of the graces of deeper prayer, if we persevere through the years, is that the Lord to turn us upward and outward. And, gradually our prayer turns more toward God and is less anxious about our own aches and pains. For now, it is enough to give them to God and trust his providence. Gradually, we simply prefer to experience the Lord quietly, in increasingly wordless contemplation. God draws us to a kind of silence in prayer as we advance along its ways. But that silence is more than an absence of sound, but instead results from us being...

There is little doubt that a kind of cultural war is being waged on many different fronts: abortion, euthanasia, the family, marriage, rampant divorce, cohabitation & fornication, homosexual activity, gay “marriage,” militant secularism and atheism, religious liberty, and so on.While some may not like the image of war, the conflicts are so deep and intense, the tensions so live and the sides so clearly marked that we can little avoid the term.In the midst of such a war however, we Christians and cultural warriors can too easily acquire an acerbic, hostile and cynical attitude, even with each other. We become...

The video below is a very creative representation of what the day and night sky on Earth would look like if the earth had rings like Saturn. It is well worth a view.But it puts me in the mind of pondering the delicate balance of life on this earth and, though the artwork in the video is beautiful, I suspect that the presence of rings would dramatically alter life on this earth, perhaps even annihilate it.By way of disclaimer, let me say I am not a geologist or astronomer. But a number of things concern me about the presence of...

Back just before Holy Week I read an interesting and provocative essay by Jennifer Fulwiler at the National Catholic Register. It is about the need to more clearly instruct Catechumens and those being received into the Church about spiritual attack. Plain and simple, the devil wants to destroy the faith of those who have newly entered the Church. And we need to be sober about this. Being sober does not mean we are in a panic. It merely means we are alert and have a mind that is clear as to the possibility, even the likelihood that the Devil will...