Free Republic

Incredibly, President George W. Bush told French President Jacques Chirac in early 2003 that Iraq must be invaded to thwart Gog and Magog, the Bible's satanic agents of the Apocalypse. Honest. This isn't a joke. The president of the United States, in a top-secret phone call to a major European ally, asked for French troops to join American soldiers in attacking Iraq as a mission from God. Now out of office, Chirac recounts that the American leader appealed to their "common faith" (Christianity) and told him: "Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. ... The biblical prophecies...

The Boston Globe won a 2003 Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the Catholic Church's decades-long cover-up of priests who sexually abused children. There is a Pulitzer Prize waiting for the reporter who can figure out why the leader of the worldwide Catholic Church, considered by Catholics the personal representative of Jesus Christ, has become an advocate for one of the most corrupt organizations on the face of the earth-the United Nations. The U.N. has been rocked by scandals involving U.N. "peace-keepers" who sexually abuse women and children, the failure to protect populations in danger of genocide, and financial corruption....

There's Red America, Blue America and Tinfoil Helmet America. And it looks like the third camp is enormously larger than anyone feared. A new poll, commissioned by the liberal Web site Daily Kos found that fully 11% of Americans think that Barack Obama wasn't born in the United States. And another 12% said that they are unsure. The doubters are heavily concentrated in the Republican Party, according to pollsters. An amazing 58% of the surveyed Republicans questioned whether Obama, in fact, entered the world in Hawaii. What this means: Millions of Americans suspect or are convinced that Obama, son of...

Pres. Barack Obama has a birthday coming up, a week from Tuesday. We hope he takes the day off—or even the whole week, the briefest of respites from his busy schedule of truncating our liberties while exhausting both the public coffers and our patience. The president’s birthday comes to mind because we recently spent some time looking at a photograph of his birth certificate, being held by Joe Miller of Factcheck.org, who took the time to examine it. President Obama was born on August 4, 1961, at 7:24 p.m, in Honolulu County, Hawaii, on the island of Oahu. The serial...

Because Deal Hudson was director of Catholic outreach for George W. Bush's 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, I was interested in hearing his take on the Obama administration's Catholic outreach for my God & Country column in tomorrow's U.S. News Weekly. Hudson thinks Obama's "common ground" talk on abortion is disingenuous—the president has rolled back the ban on federal funding for abortion providers abroad, supports rescinding the federal ban on government-funded abortion in the District of Columbia, and hasn't ruled out covering abortion through healthcare reform—but is nonetheless impressed by the administration's ongoing Catholic PR blitz. And Hudson is disturbed...

Tomorrow Pope Benedict XVI and President Barack Obama meet for the first time, an affair much anticipated and in some circles frowned upon by American Catholics in the wake of Obama's controversial Notre Dame commencement speech in May. Conservatives in the church denounced Obama's appearance as a nod by the premier Catholic university to a conciliatory politics that heralds the start of a slippery moral slope. In truth, though, Obama's pragmatic approach to divisive policy (his notion that we should acknowledge the good faith underlying opposing viewpoints) and his social-justice agenda reflect the views of American Catholic laity much more...

Pope Benedict XVI gave President Barack Obama a Vatican document on bioethics, he was trying to be clear with him about church teaching and open a path to further dialogue, the Vatican spokesman said. Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi, the spokesman, told reporters after the meeting between the pope and the president that, in giving Obama the document July 10, "the intention was not to be divisive or political, but for clarity and objectivity; to say that, for us, this is extremely important." Pope Benedict gave Obama the document "Dignitas Personae" ("The Dignity of a Person"), which was published in December...

Tacked to my wall is a lithograph of the famous Gilbert Stuart portrait of George Washington. For many years, it graced my mother's one-room schoolhouse in Lime Rock, N.Y. Antiquarian relic or enduringly relevant image? The same question may be asked of the "little red schoolhouse" itself, whose reality and legend are the subject of "Small Wonder." Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor at New York University, sets out to tell "how -- and why -- the little red schoolhouse became an American icon." Mr. Zimmerman proves a thoughtful and entertaining teacher. First, the chromatic debunking: One-room schools were often white and...

Last winter, the Boston College security policeman phoned me to warn me that someone had placed a sign on my car in the parking garage that suggested I might be in danger. It called me a bunch of foul names, including "baby killer!" I have just returned to Jersey City after a year at Boston College writing a book on Rev. Robert F. Drinan, S.J., the B.C. law school dean elected to Congress from Massachusetts in 1970 who campaigned against the Vietnam War and called for the impeachment of President Nixon on the basis of his illegal bombing of Cambodia....

The Roman Catholic bishops who attacked President Obama's recent appearance at Notre Dame and who've called for pro-abortion rights politicians to be denied communion constitute a minority. Most of the roughly 275 U.S. Catholic bishops have kept quiet about both controversies. Liberal Catholics claim this silent majority disagrees with strident public pronouncements from outspokenly conservative bishops. Most U.S. bishops, they say, think Notre Dame was right to invite the president—and that Catholic elected officials should receive communion regardless of their stance on abortion. Catholic scholar David O'Brien makes the case in the latest National Catholic Reporter: As Catholic bishops gather...

Barack Obama has an uncanny ability to disarm critics, especially those itching for a fight, and it was on full display this past week. His choice of federal judge Sonia Sotomayor as a Supreme Court nominee, of course, got all the attention. But another key appointment of a Hispanic with top-notch credentials and a compelling personal story also showed just how good the President is at keeping his opponents off balance. In fact, in selecting Catholic scholar Miguel Diaz to be the new ambassador to the Holy See, Obama not only neutralized potential controversy, but also highlighted a potential weakness...

Caritas Christi Health Care, which operates six hospitals in Massachusetts, will neither perform abortions nor make referrals to other health care providers for patients seeking abortions, Cardinal Sean O'Malley said. O'Malley issued the statement after Catholic and anti-abortion activists criticized the decision by Caritas Christi, which is affiliated with the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Boston, to enter into a partnership with a secular health care company. The joint venture with Celtic Group, Inc. would allow Caritas Christi to participate in the state's health care connector program, created under the landmark 2006 health care law to help residents sign up for...

The Senate voted 65-31 to confirm Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius as President Obama's Secretary of Health and Human Services. Just last week Sebelius again denied protection to the unborn when she vetoed a bill that would provide increased regulations on performing late term abortions. Nineteen Catholic Senators supported the Sebelius nomination and six Catholic Senators opposed. Two Catholic senators who are ardently pro-life supported the governor; Senator Sam Brownback and Senator George Voinovich. Senator Brownback announced his support early on which was a surprise and a major disappointment to many in the pro-life movement. Senator Murkowski, who has a mixed...

The US Roman Catholic Church has asked a criminology school to delve into the darkest pages of its history by probing the causes of a priest sex abuse scandal. At a meeting due to end Thursday in the eastern city of Baltimore, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops voted to disburse 335,000 dollars to fund the first three phases of a study by New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice. "It will be a groundbreaking study, never done before in the US, nor in the world," Bishop Gregory Aymond, who chairs the Committee for the Protection of Children and...

The Pope is preparing to cancel the excommunication of four traditionalist Catholic bishops including one who believes the Holocaust never happened and the gas chambers were a myth. Pope Benedict XVI has already signed the decree lifting the excommunication of the four bishops of the ultra-conservative Society of St Pius X, according to well-sourced reports in the Italian press today. One of the bishops, Richard Williamson, an English former Anglican and graduate of Winchester and Cambridge, gave an interview to Swedish TV this week in which he said: “There were no gas chambers.” The Pope, whose own position is towards...

As Easter approaches, in addition to looking upward, Catholics would be wise to look inward this year, and ask themselves one very important question: Who are we? Many Catholics are angry that the University of Notre Dame, a private Catholic institution with a 90% Christian enrollment and a crucifix in every classroom, has asked President Obama to speak at its coming commencement. Francis Cardinal George, archbishop of Chicago, called the invitation an "extreme embarrassment" to Catholics, who consider right-to-life issues among the most fundamental to their faith. Archbishops in Milwaukee and Newark made similar statements. And pro-life students at Notre...

Five years of research into one of mankind's darkest episodes has convinced a French Catholic priest that the death toll in the Holocaust is far higher than the generally accepted figure of 6 million. Father Patrick Desbois has identified 800 of the estimated 2,000 gravesites of Jews who were rounded up and shot across the Ukraine. Documenting these graves is certain to boost the current estimate of 1.7 million Jews murdered in the Ukraine, he says. He expects similar work elsewhere in eastern Europe will raise the death toll even further. "Surely, at the end of it all, the numbers...

In an action that spoke far louder than words, Pope Benedict yesterday walked out of an interfaith meeting in Jerusalem after the chief Islamic judge of the Palestinian Authority launched into an anti-Israeli diatribe. The pontiff, on his first day in Jerusalem, did not realize at first that Sheikh Taysir al-Tamimi, speaking in Arabic, was condemning the "crimes of the Jewish state" and accusing Israel of having "slaughtered women, children and senior citizens." But as soon as he was told the nature of the sheikh's tirade, he stood and left the meeting, which took place at Notre Dame church, before...