Free Republic

My beloved brother-in-law died today and I don't know how to express my sympathies to the family in this Covid crisis.I had lunch with several fellow retirees earlier in the week and one of which was just tested positive for the Covid. I want to go to my sister's house to offer comfort but I don't know if that is the safe thing to do..........This is just terrible

Victims of the Nice terror attack include a father of two who had worked at the Notre-Dame basilica welcoming worshippers and a mother of three from Brazil who had lived in France for decades. Vincent Loqués, 55, had his throat cut by the alleged attacker – named as 21-year-old Brahim Aouissaoui - and his body was found inside the church. Loqués was a devout Catholic and had been sexton at the basilica where he prepared the sacraments and altar for the mass for 10 years. His role was also to welcome visitors and worshippers to the basilica when it opened...

“Our new generations walk through our cities like strangers, they have no idea what even Easter or Christmas truly mean, or what all those stories in those beautiful stained glasses or churches tell." - Thierry Baudet "A civilization that forgets its past is condemning its future." - Santiago Abascal As Christianity has declined, European politics has secularized. Christian democratic parties have lost their distinctive religious identities and become generic liberal or conservative parties. At the same time, secular Green and Socialist parties have increased their percentage of the vote. But in recent years, this political secularization has enjoyed a notable,...

It took nearly twelve years, but we did it. My organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), has just won an important victory for the freedom of speech. Back in 2009, the Detroit area's SMART transit refused to run our AFDI ads offering help to people who were in fear for their lives for wanting to leave Islam or having left it. After an incredibly protracted court battle, the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals just stood up for the First Amendment and completely reversed the judgment banning our ads. It's a total victory for freedom: we won our free speech...

A common accusation against Roman Catholicism is that it is legalistic, slavishly beholden to an elaborate set of rules and precepts and thereby resistant to the movements of the Holy Spirit or the mercy of God. The charge may not be entirely without its merits, especially at certain times in the Church's history, in certain places, and with certain figures, but for it to be evaluated fairly an important distinction must be drawn between the prominent use of or focus on law on the one hand and legalism on the other. Legalism is the practice of law emptied of the...

Pope Francis on Wednesday described the COVID-19 pandemic as a tough “lady” taskmaster who must be obeyed...

One of the benefits of Adel Guindy’s new book, A Sword Over the Nile: A Brief History of the Copts Under Islamic Rule, is that it implicitly answers an important question: how and why did non-Muslim nations become Islamic?  In this case, how did Egypt go from being overwhelmingly Christian in the seventh century to being overwhelmingly Muslim in the twenty-first century?  To understand the significance of this question -- and because pre-Islamic Egypt’s profoundly Christian nature is often forgotten -- a brief primer is in order: Before Islam invaded, Egypt was home to some of Christendom’s earliest theological giants and...

The nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the United States Supreme Court would make her, if confirmed, the sixth Roman Catholic on the nine-person court. The Catholic Church has already contributed much to the United States’ legal system - including “the whole idea of law in general,” Fr. Pius Pietrzyk, OP, told CNA. “It’s the development of canon law (the law that governs the Church) that gives both the United States and Europe their modern notions of law..." While aspects of canon law were present since the early days of the Church, the use of the term ‘canon law’, as...

The Wreckage of Socialism is Not Just Economic I grew up in a socialist society, but I’ve found it hard sometimes to talk about socialism in America. When people like me identify the blatant failures of socialism, its advocates often argue that the socialist countries we’re talking about are “not really socialist.” In other words, no true socialism has ever existed. Hence, there is a need to practice true socialism here in America.The Reality of Socialism I think socialism should be defined based on historical facts, not on utopian fantasies that exist only in its campaigners’ heads. It’s like a...

The 1960s were intended as a rebellion against the materialism, mindless conformity, soullessness, and general inhumanity and immorality of commercial and bureaucratic (“corporate and militaristic”) America. The answer, it was thought, could be found in freeing ourselves from a society gone wrong by rejection of social forms, pursuit of intense experience, and “doing your own thing”—making individual choice the supreme standard. The solution made the problem worse. The ’60s turned society much more than before into a mass of contending wills with no higher standard to order them. Rebels and activists debunked what was left of traditional culture without offering...

Conservatives, in the United States and elsewhere, are sometimes faulted for blaming “the 1960s” for many of today’s most persistent social ills. Surveying the situation in contemporary Europe, French social theorist Olivier Roy suggests that they are mostly right—at least with respect to recognizing that the 1960s mark a moral and religious watershed in modern history. Roy warns that we will misinterpret the 1960s if we see it as a “mere hedonistic craze.” Hedonism, he adds, might have been part of the decade, but “the student revolts of 1968 marked a complete anthropological revolution, whose values are today enshrined in...

A family of seven -- including four kids -- were pepper-sprayed by violent rioters on Sunday while participating in a “Jews For Trump” rally in New York City. A member of the family told Fox News that the unprovoked attack happened while the family was driving down 5th Ave with the car windows down and Trump flags displayed. The man, who wished to remain anonymous fearing his family could be targeted, said a car pulled up next to them and unleashed pepper spray into their vehicle. "Immediately the kids started crying and screaming and I jumped out of the car...

Jewish students at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign have filed a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, alleging students facing an “unrelenting campaign” of anti-Semitic harassment. According to a release from The Louis D. Brandeis Center, the complaint details incidences dating back to 2015 including numerous swastikas found on the Urbana campus, Jewish ritual items such as menorahs and mezuzahs vandalized and windows of Jewish fraternity houses smashed by bricks. …

Jewish people make up the lowest share of Europe's population for a thousand years a new study has found, as France sees a surge in emigration due to anti-Semitism. The study, published on Wednesday, found 1.3 million people living in continental Europe, the United Kingdom and Turkey who describe themselves as Jewish - 60 percent lower than in 1970 when there were 3.2 million in the same area. Undertaken by the London-based Institute for Jewish Policy Research, the release of the study comes the week after a teacher was beheaded in a Paris suburb allegedly by a suspected Islamist last...

NAILS controversially linked to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ have fragments of ancient bone and wood embedded in them, a bombshell new study has revealed. The nails were allegedly found in Jerusalem, in a first-century burial cave believed to be the resting place of Caiaphas - the Jewish priest who sent Jesus to his death in the Bible. At some point after the cave was excavated in 1990, however, the nails went missing. Years later, filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici claimed to have found the nails, even saying that they were used to crucify Jesus himself in the 2011 documentary, Nails Of...

Christian creator of the well-known children’s video series Veggie Tales, Phil Vischer, is WOKE, folks. Recently, in some tweets, Vischer appears to be defending voting for the corrupt influence-peddler Joe Biden who embraces all sorts of policy positions that oppose biblical truth. Biden vigorously supports the Equality Act, which will lead to the oppression of theologically orthodox Christians. Biden enthusiastically affirms the legal redefinition of marriage to include homoerotic unions. He supports the chemical sterilization and surgical mutilation of gender dysphoric minors. He supports the sexual integration of women’s private spaces. And the corrupt Biden supports both the slaughter of...

Amy attended St Catherine of Siena, the school associated with her family’s parish, and then, like her grandmother, mother, aunts and sisters, went to high school at St Mary’s Dominican, an all-girls Catholic school. In a course on social justice in her junior year, the girls read papal encyclicals about economic inequality, nuclear disarmament and the rights of workers, as they also learned about the church’s stance against contraception and abortion. Their teacher, Royann Avegno (70), spoke often of her eight children, seven of whom she had adopted, most with congenital conditions or special needs; three died. She brought one...

Vadim Melnikov once fought for the land of Noah. Donning his Azerbaijani uniform 17 years ago, the ethnic Russian took his post to defend Nakhchivan, an Azeri enclave bordering Turkey and separated from their countrymen by the nation of Armenia. Melnikov is part of the 0.26 percent evangelical community. And on behalf of their nation, eight churches and the Azerbaijan Bible Society wrote an open letter to decry the popular conception that this conflict pits Muslims against Christians. (More than 770 Armenian soldiers have been killed so far. Azerbaijan does not disclose military casualties.) “The war which has been between...

A Muslim doctor has been denied German citizenship after refusing to shake a woman's hand when she gave him his certificate. The 39-year-old Lebanese national was on the brink of becoming a German after living in the country for 13 years, completing his medical studies and passing a citizenship test with the highest possible mark. But he failed at the final hurdle after refusing to shake the hand of the female official at the ceremony in 2015, leading state authorities to deny him citizenship.

The Catholic Church is the world's biggest and oldest organization. It has buried all of the greatest empires known to man, from the Romans to the Soviets. It has establishments literally all over the world, touching every area of human endeavor. It's given us some of the world's greatest thinkers, from Saint Augustine on down to René Girard. When it does things, it usually has a good reason. Everyone has a right to disagree, but it's not that they're a bunch of crazy old white dudes who are stuck in the Middle Ages. So, what's going on? The Church teaches...