Free Republic

Featured Term (selected at random):REVIVFICATION Belief that all the sacraments, except the Eucharist and penance, confer the grace originally available, once the obstacle preventing the grace is removed. It is assumed that a person wants to receive the sacrament but lackes the proper dispositions, mainly the state of grace for sacraments of the living and adequate contrition for sacraments of the dead. When one attains the state of grace or arrives at sufficient contrition, the grace of the sacraments is "revived" without repeating the sacramental rite. The validity of baptism, confirmation, matrimony, and orders is always certain in these circumstances....

The new ELCA gospel boils down to a natural man’s religion replacing fundamental Bible truth with politics. A vague ethic of love is preached for the betterment of society. Sin is seen as ignorance. Jesus is not savior but only an example of sacrificial living. Universal salvation is proclaimed for all. Gone are missionaries, the urgency for lost souls, honest awareness of sin and the need for conversion. Gone are theological and moral absolutes. Present is the undermining of scripture, protests, endless social statements and lobbying platforms. This enterprise is capped off with the desire to unite all mainline liberal...

The Baltimore Catechism Revised Edition (1941) Part Three: The Sacraments and Prayer Prayer Lesson 37 from the Baltimore Cathechism475. What is prayer? Prayer is the lifting up of our minds and hearts to God.Let us lift up our hearts with our hands to the Lord in the heavens. (Lamentations 3:41)476. Why do we pray? We pray: to adore God, expressing to Him our love and loyalty; to thank Him for His favors; to obtain from Him the pardon of our sins and the remission of their punishment; to ask for graces and blessings for ourselves and others. Watch and pray,...

Featured Term (selected at random):INTELLECTUAL VISION Supernatural knowledge in which the mind receives an extraordinary grasp of some revealed truth without the aid of sensible impressions. Thus St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556) wrote of his seeing "the humanity of Christ with the eyes of the soul." These visions take place either through ideas that are already acquired and that are then co-ordinated and interpreted by God, or through infused ideas, representing divine things, that are thus better perceived than a person would otherwise perceive them. At times the visions are obscure and their object is only dimly understood; at other times...

As we all know, in far too many cases in years past, priests were accused of sexual abuse by genuine victims—and these crimes were simply swept under the rug, by church officials who eschewed their God-given responsibility to take appropriate action. This is an established, ugly fact that is not up for debate! It’s true that there’s often more than one legitimate way for an ecclesiastical superior to deal with these problems; but doing nothing, preferring to ignore the issue in the hope that it will simply go away, never has been or will be an option, ever. Note that...

Michelangelo was asked the question how he could make a beautiful sculpture like his “Moses� out of a large block of marble. He famously answered that he simply began and chipped away everything that wasn’t Moses.And this is a paradigm for us, into senses.Clearly for us, the Lord must chip away everything in us which is not Jesus. Yes, everything that is not of the Lord must go. St. Paul said, “I live, no not I, Christ lives in me! (Gal 2:20). And thus, the Lord chips away at all in us that is not of him that we may...

Featured Term (selected at random):FAMILY ROSARY International movement promoting recitation of the Rosary by the members of a family at home. Encouraged by the popes, the practice was singled out for special recommendation by Pope Paul VI in his Apostolic Exhortation in 1974 on devotion to the Blessed Virgin. "There is no doubt," he declared, "that after the celebration of the Liturgy of the Hours, the high point which family prayer can reach, the Rosary, should be considered as one of the best and most efficacious prayers in common that the Christian family is invited to recite" (Marialis Cultus, 54)....

May 15, 2013 Wednesday of the Seventh Week of Easter   Reading 1 Acts 20:28-38 At Miletus, Paul spoke to the presbyters of the Church of Ephesus:“Keep watch over yourselves and over the whole flockof which the Holy Spirit has appointed you overseers,in which you tend the Church of Godthat he acquired with his own Blood.I know that after my departure savage wolves will come among you,and they will not spare the flock.And from your own group, men will come forward perverting the truthto draw the disciples away after them.So be vigilant and remember that for three years, night...

I was flying from Los Angeles to Miami when I found myself sitting next to two women. Sarah was sitting closest to me. She was 29, inappropriately dressed, with a ring through her nose, and she wasn’t the friendliest person I have sat next to on a plane. After we took off I couldn’t help but notice that her friend kept kissing her on the cheek, holding her hand, and rubbing her shoulder. They were gay, and that little revelation lifted my planned witnessing encounter up a big notch on the awkward-meter. I really didn’t want an angry gay couple...

Pope Francis sends a kiss to someone in the crowd at the May 8, 2013 general audience in St. Peter's Square. Credit: Stephen Driscoll/CNA. Vatican City, May 14, 2013 / 08:01 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Christians who buy into Satan’s temptation to live selfishly get swindled, while those who live life as a “gift� to others are immersed in love and the Church community, Pope Francis said. “And, we must say, with Satan the payback is rotten. He always rips us off, always!� the Pope emphasized as he contrasted the kind of selfish living that the devil promotes with the...