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Pope Francis forgot to mention: the Vatican has walls. He also keeps protecting mistaken Catholic doctrine about Israel. Pope Francis endorsed the creation of a sovereign Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria, including east Jerusalem. This should surprise no well-informed person. Francis, like his predecessor, Pope Benedict, knows where the holiest and most world-significant site of the Jewish People rests. He knows about the theological significance of the Temple Mount and how it casts a question on Catholic dogma. But let me focus on the learned Benedict whom, unlike Francis, one cannot mistake for a Leftist. Pope Benedict’s dilemma Professor...

Second, sadly it is religion, including our own, that targets, mostly verbally, and often breeds contempt for gays, lesbians and transgender people. Attacks today on LGBT men and women often plant the seed of contempt, then hatred, which can ultimately lead to violence. *** Even before I knew who perpetrated the mass murders at Pulse, I knew that somewhere in the story there would be a search for religion as motivation. While deranged people do senseless things, all of us observe and judge and act from some kind of religious background. Singling out people for victimization because of their religion,...

Does anybody, anywhere, believe that the HHS Mandate was ever intended to be anything other than a deliberate attack on the Catholic Church?Anyone?The duplicitous way that the Mandate was handled from day one should have convinced most Americans that shenanigans were afoot.The Mandate was drafted in closed-door meetings of a committee of abortion industry insiders. It violated promises that the President of the United States made to Congress in order to pass Obamacare.The administration rolled it out with an orchestrated apologia from the pandering press. Equally pandering organizations such as the ACLU joined in with assurances that the Mandate...

Some of House Speaker Paul Ryan's guests for the State of the Union address were sisters from the Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic religious order dedicated to caring for the elderly poor. The order is suing the federal government over the HHS Mandate, because the sisters do not want to provide contraception to their employees via their insurance plans. (The group does not qualify as a "religious employer" because they employ and serve people of all faiths.) Naturally, Planned Parenthood took offense to this. Never missing an opportunity, @SteveKingIA & @SpeakerRyan used tonight's #SOTU address to send an...

Vandals targeted a Roman Catholic church in Lynwood, painting demonic symbols on the doors, statues and signs. ...cut off the hands of a statue and apparently spray painted "666" on a church sign.

Saudi Arabia Bans National Geographic Cover Featuring Pope Francis BY DAVID KENNER SEPTEMBER 8, 2015. Saudi Arabia Bans National Geographic Cover Featuring Pope Francis Pope Francis has won praise around the world for advancing a more humble, tolerant version of Catholicism, but there’s one country that he evidently hasn’t won over. Saudi Arabia banned the August issue of the National Geographic’s Arabic edition, whose cover featured Francis standing in the Sistine Chapel, due to what the magazine said were “cultural reasons.” “Dear readers in Saudi Arabia, we apologize that you did not receive August’s magazine,” read a statement published on...

Romans 10:13King James Version (KJV) 13 For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.

One of the most controversial art works of the 1990s is going up for auction, and it could be yours – elephant dung and all – for around $2.3 million. “The Holy Virgin Mary,” a 1996 painting by British artist Chris Ofili, created a firestorm of controversy when it was exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum of Art in 1999. The painting depicts a black Madonna figure baring one breast, which is made from lacquered elephant dung and surrounded by butterfly-like formations of female genitalia (a play on the term putti, a type of cherub depicted in religious art). Many Catholics...

The origins of the Papacy can be traced to St. Peter, one of the original disciples of Jesus. The current pope, Francis I, is the 265th successor of St. Peter. Needless to say, all 266 popes are male. Yet, during the middle ages, there existed a story about a pope who was actually a female in disguise. The name of this supposed female pope was Joan. Who was this mysterious Pope Joan, and did she really exist? The statue that still stands in Rome is Joanna with a papal crown.(ericcostanzo.com)The first written account of Pope Joan can be traced to...

A Swedish priest who claimed that gay people have a psychological disorder that can be cured has apologised after his comments outraged gay rights campaigners. Priest Ingvar Fogelqvist, who was preaching at the Catholic parish of Arkeangeln Sankt Mikael in the southern town of Vaxjo, said in a confirmation class in front of 2,000 worshippers that gay people had a “psychological disorder that could be cured”, but claimed other types of homosexuality were incurable. Fogelqvist told the students in attendance that gay people, and people who suffer from health problems or impotence, should not be permitted to live a “normal”...

TV and movie producers rarely focus on Catholic priests in their plots, let alone use them as central characters, as in "The Father Dowling Mysteries" or "Father Murphy" in the 1980s. Maybe that's a good thing, because when Catholic priests are part of the plot these days, there is an unmistakable odor of aggression -- mocking, vilifying, and disparaging not just Catholic priests, but the priesthood itself. On March 4, on the nation's most religion-mocking channel, Comedy Central, the late-night game show "@Midnight" featured the comedian Neal Brennan. Host Chris Hardwick asked a question about confession, to which Brennan responded,...

In a rebuke to the archbishop of San Francisco, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors unanimously passed a resolution Tuesday urging the conservative Catholic leader to respect the rights of teachers and administrators. The measure comes after Archbishop Salvatore Cordileone included morality clauses in a new handbook and proposed changes to the labor contract of teachers at four Bay Area Catholic high schools, setting off a wave of opposition. “These actions really conflict with the values of San Francisco,” said Supervisor Mark Farrell, who introduced the resolution. “In San Francisco, we stand up for everyone. We stand up for our...

It was an attack of unreasoning rage and unrelenting hatred on one of the world’s greatest symbols of love and peace, life and hope. On Christmas Day in the heart of Catholic Christianity, St. Peter’s Square in Rome, the leftist radical and militant feminist group, Femen, staged another of its outrageous “happenings” against its favourite target, the Catholic Church.

On Wednesday Barack Obama thanked Pope Francis for playing a key role finalizing a deal between the US and Cuba.Pope Francis is now set on closing Gitmo.World Net Daily reported: Having helped broker the agreement to normalize relations between the United States and communist Cuba, Pope Francis plans next to turn his attention to closing the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, a goal he shares with President Obama.In a meeting last week at the Vatican with Secretary of State John Kerry, the Vatican secretary of state, Pietro Parolin, second in authority to the pope, offered to assist U.S. efforts to...

At first, it was easy to overlook. With all of his statements about caring for the poor, the disabled and immigrants, and all the fanfare surrounding his famous "Who am I to judge?" proclamation, Pope Francis seemed like a breath of fresh air for a church stuck resolutely in the past. The fact that he never commented on the long-standing marginalization of women in the Catholic Church, and asserted quite plainly that there would be no ordination of women, did nothing to dampen progressive enthusiasm for the new pope. There has been a hopeful sense that he would get around...

Roman Catholic leaders have sent e-mails of warning to dozens of Washington and Maryland priests after protesters with bullhorns yelling anti-Catholic slogans appeared at several parishes and in a couple of cases “stormed the inside of the church just before Mass,” a bishop-administrator wrote in the e-mail. A spokeswoman with the Archdiocese of Washington, which oversees 139 parishes in the District and suburban Maryland, said Wednesday that “really small” groups of protesters have appeared on the property of three or four parishes in the past couple of weeks near Mass time. They were shouting at parishioners going in and out...

Father James E. Coyle, an extraordinary priest and Knight of Columbus in the early 20th century, courageously stood up against widely-held anti-Catholic views at the risk, and then cost, of his life.The Irish-born priest was scarcely in his 20s when, after his ordination in Rome, he was dispatched to Alabama to begin his priesthood. The Catholic population in Alabama had exploded with a promise of jobs, especially in and around Birmingham’s network of coal mines, steel mills and iron foundries. Father Coyle arrived in the city shortly before a wave of anti-Catholicism flooded the country, and the revived Ku...

Sticks, Stones, and Broken Bones: The History of Anti-Catholic Violence in the U.S. We do not recall these instances of anti-Catholicism to foster more animosity or violence, but recall them as part of our history, a history that, like so many others, included the targeting of ethnic and religious groups for persecution. From left to right—Bishop John Hughes, New York, 1844; cartoon from Anti-Catholic book published by the Ku Klux Klan, 1926; Burning of St. Augustine Church, Philadelphia, 1844; Fr. James Coyle, Birmingham Alabama, murdered, 1921. You have, no doubt, heard the children’s rhyme: “Sticks and stones may break my bones...

ROME -- This weekend a priest was injured as hundreds of silent pro-family demonstrators were verbally abused and even violently attacked by homosexualist and anarchist counter-protesters at different venues throughout Italy. In Bologna, Turin, Genoa, Aosta, and Rovereto on Sunday, homosexualists and anarchists stepped up their attacks on the increasingly popular Standing Sentinels (“Sentinelle in Piedi”) demonstrations against “gay marriage” and the “LGBT” agenda. In 100 cities, organizers said about 10,000 people participated in the events. In the northern city of Rovereto, although the Sentinels had obtained a permit for the use of the piazza, a group identified as anarchists...

A woman — later identified as Joan Andrews — is arrested Sunday after refusing to leave the entrance to the “black mass” on the north side of Civic Center Music Hall during the event in Oklahoma City . Two people were arrested in connection with protests outside of Sunday’s “black mass” in downtown Oklahoma City, and police received a bomb threat tied to the event, authorities said Monday.About 42 people attended the satanic ritual at the Civic Center Music Hall. Meanwhile, hundreds of people gathered outside the venue to decry the ritual being held inside. Despite a couple of...