Free Republic

[Catholic Caucus] Vatican again turns off lights for ‘Earth Hour’ to promote ‘respect for Our Mother Earth’Father Enzo Fortunato, the communicators director of St. Peter’s Basilica, linked the move to Pope Francis’ encyclical on ‘climate change,’ Laudato Si’."The Vatican once again turned off its external lights for an hour this weekend to “raise awareness of respect for Our Mother Earth.”In a statement issued to journalists accredited to the Holy See late Saturday afternoon, Father Enzo Fortunato – the recently appointed director of communications for St. Peter’s Basilica – announced the darkening of the basilica that evening: On the occasion of...

Let me repeat the question before attempting to answer it:Why would the self-proclaimed “devout Catholic” president of the United States banish Catholic priests from a U.S. military hospital just before Christianity’s holiest week of the year?

Since the ‘death of God’ and the Sexual Liberation movement of the ’60s, America has been experiencing an explosion of religiously pagan ideological movements in concert with a relentless assault upon the Revealed Word of God, the Genesis account of creation ex nihilo, immutable truth, reality, first principles, universal moral law, and the created order of being – the two sexes (male and female) for example.

Next week, the California Department of Education will vote on a new statewide ethnic studies curriculum that advocates for the “decolonization” of American society and elevates Aztec religious symbolism—all in the service of a left-wing political ideology. The new program, called the Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum, seeks to extend the Left’s cultural dominance of California’s public university system, 50 years in the making, to the state’s entire primary and secondary education system, which consists of 10,000 public schools serving a total of 6 million students. In theoretical terms, the new ethnic studies curriculum is based on the “pedagogy of the...

Pope Francis petitions UN for new annual secular celebration of ‘human fraternity’ ROME, December 9, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — In the latest sign of the importance Pope Francis attributes to his contentious Abu Dhabi interreligious initiative, he has now united with the Grand Imam of al-Azhar Mosque in Egypt, Ahmed el-Tayeb, in petitioning the United Nations to declare February 4 the annual World Day of Human Fraternity, the Vatican has announced.  February 4 is the anniversary of Pope Francis’s controversial joint declaration with the Sunni Grand Imam, seen by its critics as promoting religious indifferentism. In a message delivered last week to...

Abp. Viganò: ‘The World Neo-Religion Will Have Its Temple — With the Pope’s Approval’ Latest essay warns against compromising Christ's truth Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò's latest essay concerns the Abrahamic Family House project, a structure that will host a synagogue, a mosque and a church in Abu Dhabi. The former papal nuncio warns against the dangers of syncretism and highlights the contradiction between this ecumenical project and traditional teaching of the Church. Dr. Aldo Maria Valli has granted us permission to republish Viganò's essay in full. To the Venerable Brothers ... who have peace and communion with the Apostolic See in the...

Dr. Michael Brown appeared on Monday's CBN Newswatch to discuss the rise of witchcraft in America. He says the rapid rise of witchcraft is very real and frightening. Newswatch is seen weekdays on the CBN News Channel. To view a programming schedule, click here. On Thursday, many little girls around the country will dress up as witches for Halloween. Just last week, it was reported by several media outlets that "thousands of witches" were gathering to cast a spell on President Trump, which they said was to prevent him from "harming the country." Should Christians take witches and witchcraft seriously?...

[Catholic Caucus] Pope opens synod urging bishops ‘not to kick the Holy Spirit out of the hall’ ROME - Pope Francis launched his high-stakes summit on the Amazon into orbit Monday, opening things up by blasting ideologies that disrespect native and indigenous cultures and urging bishops and other participants not to “kick the Holy Spirit out of the hall” as the Oct. 6-27 event unfolds.“Ideology is a dangerous weapon,” the pope said, opening the first working session of the Synod of Bishops on the Amazon.“It’s reductive and leads us to exaggerate our pretense to intellectually understand [a culture] without admiring...

A Reflection on the theology underlying the “Instrumentum Laboris” for the up-coming Amazon Synod. This essay is written in reminiscence of the prophet Jeremiah whose warning to the people, priests and kings and princes of Judah went largely unheeded. (Jeremiah 1:17-19)While much has been written concerning individual aspects or problems with this document, mainly concerning married priests, laymen and women leading liturgical services, the politicization of the Faith and some individual practices of the local tribes, little has been said about the actual theological underpinnings of the synod.While Cardinal Walter Brandmüller has labeled  the  “Instrumentum” heretical, if not  apostasy, and...

As a neo-pagan evolutionary materialist (pagan animist), Dennett enthusiastically embraces Darwin's evolutionary theory because evolution – an unseen creative energy that acts upon matter – supposedly provides a 'scientific' explanation for the emergence of life from non-life bearing chemicals, thereby supposedly negating the necessity of the living, supernatural Tri-Personal God. Hence Dennett's delusional insistence that there is no soul/spirit (mind, will) associated with the human brain or any supernatural God or life after death. Thus the central concern of Dennett's career has been to explain how, ".... meaning, function and purpose can come to exist in a world that is...

“When also all that generation were gathered unto their fathers; and there arose another generation after them, which knew not the Lord, nor yet the works which He had done for Israel. Then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and served the Baals. They forsook the Lord, the God of their ancestors, who had brought them out of Egypt. They followed and worshiped various gods of the peoples around them. They aroused the Lord’s anger...they forsook him and served Baal and the Ashtoreths." Judges 2:10-13 In his book “New Evangelicalism: the New World Order,” Paul Smith,...

With over 500 pages and 1,200 footnotes, Ted Flynn’s book, “Hope of the Wicked: the Master Plan to Rule the World,” details many of the agendas of the global ‘elite’ community. With several thousand quotes it uses the words of prime ministers, secretaries of treasury, secretaries of state, philanthropists and global business leaders to describe their NWO vision and their plans to bring it about as well as the convergence, on a global basis, of multinational corporations, foundations and the political and sociological instruments that would form a one-world government designed to bring about a New World Order. Flynn writes...

“Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son” (1 John 2:22). “And the fifth angel sounded the trumpet, and I saw a star fall from heaven upon the earth, and there was given to him the key of the bottomless pit." (Rev. 9:1) In his Concise Commentary Matthew Henry identifies falling stars as tepid, indecisive, weak or apostate clergy who, "Having ceased to be a minister of Christ, he who is represented by this star becomes the minister of the devil; and lets loose the...

My husband I just ended our debate about having children. To breed or not to breed, this was the question — and it had been ticking like an egg timer in the back of my head for 15 years. We talked about it for five months. In the car on the way to work. During dinner. For five minutes, for 30 minutes. After seeing nephews and nieces. I wanted it to be a decision we made, not one made for us by chance or time. I turned to friends with kids for advice. “Feel free to convince me to your...

Did you get here Googling "exotic wood raids?" Is this not what you expected? I'm sorry. Settle in for some hot public policy.Last we checked in with Gibson, the famed Tennessee guitar maker had been raided twice by armed federal agents, who seized almost $500,000 in exotic wood imported from India and Madagascar and shut down production. The ebony and rosewood in question have been used for decades to make the instrument's fingerboards and are integral to their style and sound, the company said. (Great video background from Reason, here.)This week, Gibson settled with the government in a "criminal enforcement...

New light bulb efficiency standards will begin phasing in on Jan. 1 despite intense opposition from conservatives, who have blasted the rules as a textbook unnecessary federal regulation. While Republicans secured inclusion of a measure blocking funding for enforcement of the standards in a year-end spending bill, energy efficiency groups say the provision will have little practical impact. The Energy Department rules will nonetheless go into effect at the start of 2012. "The [spending bill] cut funding for enforcement, however the law is still in effect," said Jack Gillis, spokesman for the Consumer Federation of America. "It is our expectation...

<p>First she was buoyantly up in a "dangerous" People's Park tree protesting "Everything," but now she's at Highland Hospital with a broken back, ending an eight-day protest which was a protest-in-progress.</p> <p>Her last fall from the tree was her second. She fell in her second day in the tree and was caught in the arms of a friend before she hit the ground. "Moon Shadow," who was first up, last Monday, reportedly took a plunge when—out on a limb—he helped attach a protest banner.</p>

Julian Huxley, the head of UNESCO in 1947, wrote a book titled, “UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy.” His book was a blueprint for a New World Order that called for a single 'new' spirituality---a mixture of Buddhist materialist-pantheism, Liberalized 'pantheistic' Christianity, Gnosticism, and other occult traditions--- one language, and one way of thinking. He believed a global order could be brought about through the universal implementation of Hegel’s Dialectic process. Huxley observed, “The task before UNESCO…is to help the emergence of a single world culture with its own philosophy and background of ideas and with its own broad purpose.”...

It’s fitting that James Cameron’s “Avatar” arrived in theaters at Christmastime. Like the holiday season itself, the science fiction epic is a crass embodiment of capitalistic excess wrapped around a deeply felt religious message. It’s at once the blockbuster to end all blockbusters, and the Gospel According to James.But not the Christian Gospel. Instead, “Avatar” is Cameron’s long apologia for pantheism — a faith that equates God with Nature, and calls humanity into religious communion with the natural world. In Cameron’s sci-fi universe, this communion is embodied by the blue-skinned, enviably slender Na’Vi, an alien race whose idyllic existence on...

Einstein’s God by Jean F. Drew Albert Einstein (1879 – 1955) — reluctant scientific revolutionary and one of the most prolific theoretical physicists who ever lived — continues to fascinate us as a world-class thinker and important public actor to this day. There has been much speculation regarding his religious views in particular over the course of many decades. Some people nowadays maintain that Einstein was an atheist. Others, a pantheist. His great biographer Abraham Pais (in Subtle Is the Lord, 1982) averred that Einstein’s God was simply the God of Baruch Spinoza ((1632–1677), one of the most influential European...