Free Republic

The nation of the Franks are well known today as the progenitors of modern France, as well as the barbarian nation that most readily and ardently embraced Catholicism. As Saint Avitus of Vienne shows in his letter to King Clovis upon the latter’s baptism in AD 496, the subject Christian Romans placed great hopes in the conversion of the Frankish king and his court, and the event was an occasion of great joy. This was particularly true given Clovis’s previous history as a ruthless conqueror who defeated and dissolved the last remnant of Western Roman power in Gaul, the so-called...

Most visitors to Rome over the years have marveled at the famous fragments of the Colossus of Constantine. Largely destroyed and dismantled in antiquity, this massive work of marble, wood and bronze once stood in the Basilica of Maxentius. Significant chunks of the Colossus are now located in a courtyard at the Capitoline Museum in Rome where my wife and I visited them on our honeymoon a few decades back. In 2024, a magnificent replica of the Colossus was erected nearby in the garden behind the Capitoline Museum. While the sheer size of the work has drawn considerable attention, the...

@JohnCornyn Art. II, Section 2,clause 2 provides that the President shall appoint officers with the advice and consent of the Senate. Having won the election decisively, I believe President Trump has earned the right to appoint his own cabinet, absent extraordinary circumstances. Therefore, it is my intention to consent to the appointment of @TulsiGabbard as Director of National Intelligence.

Diplomacy Never Works—Until It DoesFiction has a peculiar way of speaking the truth that real-world politics often refuses to admit. In the season finale of The Diplomat, Hal Wyler delivers a strikingly raw monologue about the maddening, soul-crushing, yet absolutely necessary practice of diplomacy. His words ring with a hard-earned cynicism: diplomacy is a slog, an exercise in endless repetition, a near-certain failure—until, suddenly, it isn’t. Until it cracks open the door to peace. This is not a utopian fantasy; it is the brutal reality of statecraft. And it is precisely why Tulsi Gabbard’s willingness to talk to Bashar al-Assad...

[Catholic Caucus] The "Mayan Rite" and Papal Progressivism - by Abp. Héctor AgüerAbp. Héctor AgüerEmeritus of La PlataBuenos Aires, November 27, 2024 The Liturgy represents the intimate life of the Church, its essence: the worship of the Triune God, in which the First Commandment is fulfilled; the reproduction of the Paschal Mystery of Jesus Christ; the communication of the Grace of the Holy Spirit in the celebration of the Sacraments. The Liturgy is carried out according to various Eastern and Western rites. The Roman Rite includes the Ordo of the Latin Mass, which originated around the 6th century and has...

[Catholic Caucus] Defense by Word Twisting: Mayan Rite Not a Mayan Rite, the Liturgical Dance not a Liturgical DanceThe Mexican Bishops’ Conference felt the need to justify its "Mayan Rite" in a statement last Friday. They responded to "different interpretations" which were in fact persuasive criticisms.The bishops claim that there is no Mayan rite, no ritual dances and no Mayan altars.According to them, the new Eucharist "does not constitute a new rite or a substantial change in the structure of the Roman Missal".The Mayan rite is an "optional adaptation" to the Novus Ordo.The Bishops do not want to speak of...

Prominent Hitler apologist and despiser of all things non-white, Corey J. Mahler, is about to be yet again condemned by his former denomination, with the Iowa District East of the LCMS voting on a resolution to condemn him and his podcast in the upcoming year. Mahler is a two-bit “theologian” with a few thousand Twitter followers who occasionally gets noticed after one of his particularly offensive tweets goes viral, as well as the co-host of the openly racist podcast Stone Choir. When he’s not posting memes crushing on his beloved Führer, Mahler is giving folks ample evidence of why he’s...

[Catholic Caucus] BREAKING: Vatican approves Mayan rite with ritual dance, female incensors and lay leadership of Mass partsThe much anticipated Mayan rite of the Mass will be implemented in certain parts of Mexico, and contains a number of element drawn from pagan, indigenous culture. A draft of the rite seen previously by LifeSite highlights the pagan theology underpinning the actions.Mayan altar on the floor of a churchVATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — The Vatican has approved the Mayan rite of the Mass which will involve ritual dancing, women taking the place of the priest in incensing the altar, and lay leadership of...

'Amazon' Eucharist 'Approved' for MexicoThe retired bishop of San Cristóbal de Las Casas, México, Felipe Arizmendi, 84, announced on 13 November on Exaudi.org that the Dicastery for the Novus Ordo Liturgy had "finally" approved some "liturgical adaptations" for the Eucharist in the Tseltal, Tsotsil, Ch'ol, Tojolabal and Zoque ethnic groups of his former diocese.Arizmendi is responsible for the doctrine of the faith at the Mexican Bishops' Conference (CEM) and appears also to be a Cardinal. San Cristóbal de Las Casas has 1.6 million Catholics and 135 priests.The prelate writes that "ritual dances" have been approved at the offertory, in the...

STAUNTON, Va. — A pagan religion that some experts say can be interpreted as encouraging violence is gaining popularity among prison inmates, one of whom is scheduled to be executed this week for killing a fellow prisoner at the foot of an altar. Michael Lenz is scheduled to die Thursday for the death of Brent Parker, who was stabbed dozens of times at Augusta Correctional Center during a gathering of inmates devoted to Asatru, whose followers worship Norse gods. At his trial, Lenz testified that Parker had not been taking the religion seriously and had to die to protect the...

Skyler Philippi, 24, of Columbia, Tennessee, was arrested by federal agents and charged with attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction and attempting to destroy an energy facility. “As charged, Skyler Philippi believed he was moments away from launching an attack on a Nashville energy facility to further his violent white supremacist ideology – but the FBI had already compromised his plot,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “This case serves as yet another warning to those seeking to sow violence and chaos in the name of hatred by attacking our country’s critical infrastructure: the Justice Department will find...

70 years old and I've never seen or heard of anything like him. Trump may not be human.

[Catholic Caucus] Pope says Church must ‘confront forms of paganism’ in secularismIn his meeting with his brother Jesuits in Belgium, Pope Francis call secularization a “complex phenomenon” and noted sometimes the Church must “confront forms of paganism.”Speaking to 150 Jesuits in Brussels on Sep. 28, the pontiff answered a question from a member living in Amsterdam, one of the most secularized cities in the world.In his reply, Francis noted he didn’t mean a paganism like the one in the ancient world.“We do not need a statue of a pagan god to talk about paganism: The very environment, the air we...

Cardinal, exorcists have differing takes on ‘cleansing’ ritual performed on Mexican presidentA Mexican cardinal and three priests, two of them exorcists, have differing takes on the “cleansing” ritual that was performed during the inauguration of the country’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum.Sheinbaum, a candidate of the coalition Let’s Keep Making History — which consists of the political parties National Regeneration Movement (MORENA), Labor Party (PT), and Green Ecologist Party of Mexico (PVEM) — was the winner of the June 2 presidential elections. She assumed office on Oct. 1.Sheinbaum succeeds President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, founder of MORENA who in December 2018...

Here is the formatted transcript with proper capitalization, punctuation, and paragraphs added (formatting by Claude.ai): Yeah, even the phrase for Chapter 5, the title of Chapter 5 is called "The Rise of the Materialist Magician." And that phrase "materialist magician," I took from C.S. Lewis's book "The Screwtape Letters." For those that don't know, "The Screwtape Letters" is an epistolary novel that takes the form of a series of letters that this demon Screwtape writes to his nephew demon Wormwood. Wormwood is assigned a person to try to damn to hell, to tempt and to enslave. Wormwood asks Screwtape a...

A petition for class action status by a former Chicago Public School student, Kaya Hudgins, who alleged that her school coerced her to participate in Transcendental Meditation (TM) and Hindu practices has been granted by a federal judge in a lawsuit against the Board of Education of the City of Chicago and the David Lynch Foundation. Attorneys at Mauck & Baker, representing Kaya Hudgins, received an order from the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois awarding class certification to Hudgins and her peers. The class action lawsuit alleges that while minor students were attending certain Chicago...

Pagan ‘prayer’ to Zeus, Apollo offered at 2024 Olympics torch lighting ceremonyA ‘high priestess’ prayed to Zeus and Apollo at a Greek pagan temple during the Paris Olympics’ torch lighting ceremony earlier this month, prompting backlash from Christians online.OLYMPIA, Greece (LifeSiteNews) — In less than 100 days, the summer Olympics will kick off in Paris, which, like every leading global city, a growing number of non-Christian foreigners now call home. God forbid there should be a terrorist attack or a Catholic church that goes up in flames. Earlier this month, the games’ first ceremony, the torch lighting ritual, was held...

The research found evidence of the "incaprettamento" method of murder at 14 Neolithic sites in Europe.The murder of sacrificial victims by "incaprettamento" — tying their neck to their legs bent behind their back, so that they effectively strangled themselves — seems to have been a tradition across much of Neolithic Europe, with a new study identifying more than a dozen such murders over more than 2,000 years.The study comes after a reassessment of an ancient tomb that was discovered more than 20 years ago at Saint-Paul-Trois-Châteaux near Avignon, in southern France. The tomb mimics a silo, or pit where grain...

The Decline Of Christianity Means The End Of Neutral SpacesThe fading of Christianity in the West doesn’t mean the triumph of secular liberalism but the return of an oppressive paganism.President’s Biden’s decision to elevate Transgender Day of Visibility on Easter, the holiest day of the Christian calendar, was no accident. Yes, we all know (now) that it falls on March 31 every year, while the date of Easter obviously varies. But the idea that the White House’s promotion of the transgender agenda on Easter was a mere coincidence, as Biden’s press secretary insisted on Monday, strains credulity. We all know...

The following essay is adapted from the author’s new book, Pagan America: The Decline of Christianity and the Dark Age to Come. It’s hard to survey the state of our country and not conclude that something is very wrong in America. I don’t just mean with our economy or the border or rampant crime in our cities, but with our basic grasp on reality itself. Our cultural and political elite now insist that men can become women, and vice versa, and that even children can consent to what they euphemistically call “gender-affirming care.” In a perfect inversion of reason and...