Free Republic

Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal is offering Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad advice on tactics for defunding Planned Parenthood.According to reports from a conservative website in Iowa, Jindal sent Branstad a letter dated Sept. 23 and written on letterhead from Jindal's office. The letter was released after Branstad announced Tuesday (Sept. 29) that he wouldn't pursue canceling Medicaid funding for the family planning organization.Presidential candidates usually focus on national issues rather than wade into debates over state and local issues where they are campaigning. But in this case, defunding Planned Parenthood has risen to the fore of the national political discussion...

BATON ROUGE – On 60 Minutes Sunday, Donald Trump made one thing perfectly clear – he supports a new federal entitlement program to give free government funded health care to every American. This is how the Donald described ‘Trumpcare’ on 60 Minutes:Scott Pelley: Universal health care.Donald Trump: I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.Scott Pelley: The uninsured person is going to be taken care of. How? How?Donald Trump: They’re going to be taken care...

Jindal Challenges Secretary Clinton to Healthcare DebateBATON ROUGE – According to a report in The Washington Post, Secretary Hillary Clinton is preparing to double down on her support for ObamaCare with a series of campaign events across the country.Secretary Clinton’s first stop on her socialized medicine tour is today in Louisiana, where Governor Bobby Jindal has rejected the expansion of ObamaCare in the state because it would put more people on a poorly-run government healthcare system, take away freedom from people, and bust the budget.Governor Jindal said, “As Secretary Clinton seeks to distract the voters from her e-mail scandal, she...

BOSTON (AP) — The furor on Capitol Hill over Planned Parenthood has stoked a debate about the use of tissue from aborted fetuses in medical research, but U.S. scientists have been using such cells for decades to develop vaccines and seek treatments for a host of ailments, from vision loss to cancer and AIDS. Anti-abortion activists triggered the uproar by releasing undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officials that raised questions of whether the organization was profiting from the sale of fetal tissue. Planned Parenthood has denied making any profit and said it charges fees solely to cover its costs. University...

FIFTH video from David Daleiden (and the Center for Medical Progress).

The Eucharist is the focal point of the Catholic faith because it is Jesus present with us here on earth today. In the Eucharist, Jesus prolongs His presence on earth and most completely fulfills His words: "Behold I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world" (Mt. 28:20). The Eucharist is Jesus' greatest expression of His love for us. Jesus expresses His love for us in three ways in the Eucharist: by re-presenting His sacrifice of the Cross in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass, by uniting His life with ours in Holy Communion, and by...

WHAT WE ARE DOING AND WHY On July 14th and July 21st, the Center for Medical Progress released undercover videos showing Planned Parenthood executives casually discussing the harvesting and sale of baby body parts. It was sickening. It was horrifying. In both videos, the abortionists filmed - Dr. Deborah Nucatola, Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Senior Director of Medical Services and Dr. Mary Gatter, the President of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America’s Medical Directors’ Council - candidly discuss the harvesting and selling the body parts of aborted babies and the haggling of prices for these baby body parts. The abortion...

The Venerable Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824) was a German Augustinian nun of great sanctity. She endured a life of sufferings, bore the stigmata of our Lord and was a seer, who witnessed scenes from the life of Christ with the vividness of one who was there. Those revelations were one of the sources used in making the film The Passion of the Christ. She also foretold future occurrences in the Church. The following are from her visions pertaining to the emergence of a subversive Church of Darkness that would deceive many of the faithful into "complete decadence." May 13, 1820:...

Op-Ed by Gov. Bobby Jindal in Conservative Review Let’s be honest here. The President’s inability to say the words Radical Islam is threatening our national security and the safety of the American people. It’s time to stop pretending. Radical Islam has brought terror and death across the Middle East and the world — and on American soil – yet this president calls it just “violent extremism” or something similar. He gets it wrong nearly every time. Yesterday, Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron got it right. He had the courage to say what President Obama will not, when he said that,...

In this blog I want to show that sexually provocative clothing can lead to sexual activity. The lust that provocative clothing causes, is for sex, for pleasure outside of marriage, and not to bring a child into the world. The type of sex that this could provoke, based on lust, could lead to an un-wanted pregnancy. And this pregnancy could end with the unborn baby being murdered at an abortion mill.As many of you know, the 40 Days For Life has begun again. I went to pray the Holy Rosary where they kill unborn babies this morning after Latin Mass....

While praying before the Most Holy Sacrament at night:A great work of love is being done here, one that proceeds directly from My Eucharistic Heart to glorify My Father and to redeem the world, for the work of redemption is continued in the Sacrament of My Body and Blood until the end of time. . . .I am here [in the Most Blessed Sacrament] for you and for the whole world. Take your place here before Me, and abide before My Face, close to My Heart that is all love.It is no little thing for a poor human creature of...

I received this morning a heart–rending request for prayers to Saint Dymphna on behalf of a woman who has been suffering from mental illness for many years. Although I cannot reveal the details of the request, I would ask my dear readers, of their charity, to say the following prayer to Saint Dymphna for this suffering handmaid of God.O glorious Saint Dymphna, virgin martyr and chaste bride of Christ, child of Ireland, bereft of thy mother, object of thy grief-stricken father’s unlawful desires, pure dove who, to preserve thy purity, didst fly to foreign shores, dauntless follower of the immolated...

You could have come sooner. I was waiting for you. I am always waiting for you: I wait for all My priests in the Sacrament of My Love, but they make little of Me, and of the fact that I wait for them day and night.If only they knew what awaits them in My presence : the plenitude of mercy, and rivers of living water to cleanse them, to reinvigorate their priesthood, and to sanctify them.This was the secret of my saints, of the holy friends whom I have made known to you :Dom Marmion, the Curé of Ars,Saint Peter...

America does not sustain and create faith. Faith created and sustains America. -Gov. Bobby Jindal, "The Silent War on Religious Liberty" The President is very concerned about religious liberty…and also, if you like your religion you can keep your religion. -Gov. Bobby Jindal, "The Silent War on Religious Liberty" In a surprise move, Gov. Bobby Jindal spoke little about the failing economy and much about religious liberty in his speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Library Thursday night. But by boldly stating, "The modern left in America is completely intolerant of the views of people of faith. They...

Students say it is no coincidence that Benedictine College was chosen to lead the March for Life in the year of its consecration. “I think Mary has definitely had a hand in us taking eight buses and the overall success of our trip to the March for Life,” said Kathryn Brown, the college’s Ravens Respect Life student coordinator. The signs of Mary’s involvement are everywhere, she said. Taking a quarter of the student population more than 1,000 miles is expensive, but Kathryn  said she got a call over Christmas break from the college’s advancement office that they had found...

All of us who are traditional Catholics feel strongly about what is happening in the Catholic Church. What I mean is the strong progressive, modernist agenda of telling us to be silent about the intrinsic evil of abortion, homosexual activity, birth control, divorce and modesty. This agenda is being imposed on most Catholics.I bring this issue up, because these are extremely important moral issues that need to be addressed for the well being of our society. How can anyone ever be for the murder of the unborn babies? Any rational person, without prejudices, knows that abortion kills unborn human beings...

There’s a story that’s told about two uncles and their young nephew. Let’s call the nephew “John.” We’ll call the uncles “Bill” and “Howard.” This family had lots of money, but unluckily for the two uncles, their young nephew was the heir to all the wealth—and he was only 8 years old. But in the event of John’s death, Bill and Howard would get the entire estate. Hmmmm…… So one day young John was left at home alone while his parents went out for the evening. You see this was in the days when an 8 year-old could be safely...

For Catherine Mectilde de Bar, the adoration of Our Lord in the Most Blessed Sacrament is not an occasional devotion; it is, rather, the direction given to one’s whole life. Adoration is not perpetual because one never leaves one’s prie-dieu before the altar; it is perpetual when one makes the Most Holy Eucharist the treasure of one’s life. “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” (Matthew 6:21) In a remarkable conference for the feast of the Epiphany 1694, Mother Mectilde writes: Our vow of adoration binds us indispensably to live only from the life of Jesus...

As the beginning of the Mectildian Jubilee Year (1614–2014) draws near, I decided to translate these passages from a confidential text of Mother Mectilde written in or around 1671. This text was not published until 1992, when it appeared in Mother Marie–Véronique Andral’s “Itinéraire spirituel de Mère Mectilde”. These texts reveal Mother Mectilde’s acute sensitivity, her intelligence, her gift of empathy, and her zeal. I, for one, find them very moving.When all seems overturned, to the point of my feeling almost overwhelmed; when I don’t know where I stand; and when I meet with opposition everywhere, in the minds of...

Last January I decided I stink so badly at keeping New Year’s resolutions that I was only going to make ONE. I figured I might be able to do just one. For 2013, I was going to be kind. So many of the saints saw a connection between kindness and holiness. It seemed pretty simple. And beautiful. And do-able. How hard could it be (just) to be kind to people? Wasn’t I already (mostly) kind to (most) people (mostly) all the time already? But it turns out that being kind can be terrifically challenging, at least for me. I had...