Free Republic

Three questions to begin: 1. Why did the World Meeting of Families, which took place in [Ireland last week], all but exclude from its panels and speakers people who had been active in recent Irish referenda relating to family and children? 2. Why did virtually every panel of commentators covering the World Meeting of Families and papal visit on Ireland’s national radio and television station comprise at least 50 percent LGBT activists? 3. Why did the Irish media play down the explosive intervention of the former Vatican diplomat Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò until Pope Francis was preparing to leave Ireland...

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – The Vatican on Thursday angrily attacked the media over its reporting of sexual abuse of children by priests, saying there was an "ignoble attempt" to smear Pope Benedict "at any cost." The editorial in a Vatican newspaper came on a day abuse victims protested near St Peter's Square to demand the pope open files on pedophile clerics and defrock "predator priests," and a cardinal spoke of a "conspiracy" against the church. "The prevalent tendency in the media is to ignore the facts and stretch interpretations with the aim of spreading the picture of the Catholic Church...

No doubt you’ve heard the story about how the Pope refused to “defrock” (a term not found in the Canon Law of the Catholic Church) a priest who abused 200 deaf children. It’s been on television news because it was in the New York Times (remember that network news decides what to cover based on what’s in the Times); and, of course, whenever the Times in involved, the truth is hard to find. The story is actually an old one. The priest in question, Father Lawrence Murphy, abused his victims between 1950 and 1974, while assigned to a school for...

Washington D.C., Mar 24, 2010 / 03:03 am (CNA).- A prominent Catholic writer says “selective” and “salacious” reporting of Catholic clergy in the aftermath of clerical sexual abuse scandals is being used to discredit a “powerful moral voice” in public debate. Acknowledging genuine abuse, she says present day anti-clericalism echoes the slanders of pre-Revolutionary France. That view comes from Elizabeth Lev, an art historian who has written for Inside the Vatican, Sacerdos and First Things magazine. A regular columnist for Zenit, she is also the daughter of former U.S. Ambassador to the Vatican Mary Ann Glendon. “While no one denies...

A bill currently before the Ugandan Parliament sounds like an absurdist scenario from some liberal nightmare about a theocratic state: Under the proposed law -- which appears to have strong public support -- criminal penalties on homosexual acts in the East African nation would be made much harsher, and include the death penalty. Killing homosexuals for having sex? Just as shocking, however, are the links between the proposal and American Christians who have at times been rousing cheerleaders for Uganda's draconian statutes. A key episode in the trail of evidence was an event in March 2009 in the capital, Kampala,...

Roger Nash Baldwin was the founder of the American Civil Liberties Union and a notable American Communist. These are facts. Now, read his words: “I seek the social ownership of property, the abolition of the propertied class and sole control by those who produce wealth. Communism is, of course, the goal."— Harvard Class Book of 1935, spotlighting Baldwin's class of 1905 on its thirtieth anniversary.[1] “Do steer away from making it look like a Socialist enterprise...We want also to look like patriots in everything we do. We want to get a good lot of flags, talk a good deal about...