Free Republic

The contempt in which the Catholic Church and its convictions are held by the ruling classes of 21st century Europe is hardly a secret. For reasons of political expedience, however, European governments feel compelled to put the best face on such Catholic mega-events as papal visits. Yet every once in a while the mask of tolerance slips and the contempt can be seen for what it is.The mask slipped at the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) in late April. The Pope is scheduled to visit the United Kingdom in September; the centerpiece of his pilgrimage is the beatification of...

Nursing a nagging headache and a sore throat, Gemma Pickwell queued at the pharmacy counter of her local Boots store on a chilly Saturday morning, her arms laden with cold remedies. She felt her cheeks flush as she then sheepishly muttered to the pharmacist that she also needed the morning-after pill. But Gemma's blushes were not simply prompted by the embarrassment of having to ask for such an emergency measure, or the fact that the night before she'd had drunken, unprotected sex with her boyfriend, but also because, shockingly, it was her 60th request for the drug in less than...

More and more, I wonder whether lefties mean it, any of it. Take Rosie O’Donnell. The other day, one of her co-hosts on “The View” was musing on current events and opined, “If you take radical Islam and you want to talk about what is going on there you have to…” And at this point Rosie interrupted. “One second. Radical Christianity is just as threatening as radical Islam in a country like America where we have a separation of church and state.” Does she really believe that? That “radical Christianity” is “just as threatening” as “radical Islam”? These terms are...

This is the continent where some leading thinkers are talking about a "post-Christian Europe." And this is the country of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who infamously quipped, "God is dead." So some may be surprised at the receptivity in Germany this week to visiting Pope Benedict XVI's message: Europe needs to rethink the thesis that secularism and economic progress go hand in hand. Coincidentally, some of Europe's stalwart secularists are challenging the idea that religious reasoning inevitably retreats from the public sphere as countries modernize. Germans themselves are modeling a growing acceptance of religion's role in shaping society: • Head of...

Prime Minister Tony Blair says he prayed to God when deciding whether or not to send UK troops to Iraq.Mr Blair answered "yes" when asked on ITV1 chat show Parkinson if he had sought holy intervention on the issue. "Of course, you struggle with your own conscience about it... and its one of these situations that, I suppose, very few people ever find themselves in." The interview, Michael Parkinson's first on his chat show with a serving PM, will be shown on Saturday. "In the end, there is a judgement that, I think if you have faith about these things,...