Free Republic

When Pope Francis canonizes Father Junípero Serra on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., Serra will be the first Hispanic American saint, and the first saint canonized on American soil. He also figures to be one of the most controversial saints in the long history of the Roman Catholic Church – a symbol that roils some hearts even as it lifts others. Serra, an 18th-century Spanish friar who founded nine of the 21 California missions, including Mission San Juan Capistrano, is gaining sainthood, in part, because he helped bring the church to the Americas. By one reckoning, Serra’s legacy is nothing less...

As a graduate student at Columbia University's Russian Institute, my field of study was totalitarianism. I learned that a major characteristic of Soviet and other totalitarian regimes was their frequent rewriting of history. As a famous Soviet dissident joke put it:"In the Soviet Union, the future is known; it's the past which is always changing."Given the relationship between changing the past and totalitarianism, there is reason to be amply frightened by the current decision of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to change the seal of Los Angeles County. Solely because of a letter from the American Civil Liberties...

<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) - The American Civil Liberties Union is demanding the removal of a tiny cross that is among historic symbols on Los Angeles County's official seal. The seal "prominently depicts a Latin cross, a sectarian religious symbol that represents the beliefs of one segment of the county's diverse population" and is an "impermissible endorsement of Christianity" by the county government, the ACLU Foundation of Southern California said in a letter to county officials this week. "Under clearly established law, the seal is unconstitutional," the letter said, warning that refusal to remove the cross in a "reasonable time-frame" would cause the ACLU to seek a court order.</p>