Free Republic

In today’s #BelieveAllWomen environment, due process isn’t what it used to be. It’s time for To Kill a Mockingbird to give up its treasured place in American culture. The 1960 novel by Harper Lee was published to instant acclaim, has sold more than 30 million copies, and is ubiquitous in high-school curricula. The 1962 movie version, starring Gregory Peck, is a classic in itself and won three Academy Awards. A play based on the novel is about to open on Broadway. This is quite the résumé for a book that, prior to the publication of a sequel in 2015 that...

Thread by @TheLastRefuge2: "1. The economics will be in the details. But the big issue was always a problem. Canada no longer manufactures much. They have no heavy indu […]" 1. The economics will be in the details. But the big issue was always a problem. Canada no longer manufactures much. They have no heavy industry left, and generally only assemble stuff now. They are a narrow and weak economy by design @manny_ottawa

A new watchdog, Better Church Governance, plans to produce a dossier on all the cardinal electors US lay people are launching a new initiative to assess cardinals’ records on combatting abuse and corruption. Better Church Governance has signed up former FBI agents as investigators, led by Phil Scala, a former FBI Supervisory Special Agent. Academics, lawyers and editors will help to draw up a dossier, “The Red Hat Report”, which will cover all cardinals able to vote in the next papal conclave – that is, those under the age of 80. It aims to increase transparency and honesty in Church...

St. Paul tells us in 2 Thessalonians that the Day of the Lord cannot come “unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness, the son of perdition,” is revealed. But “the mystery of lawlessness is already at work,” he adds. The man who gives full expression to that mystery, who completes the evolution of lawless humanity and leads its final rebellion, is the last but not by any means the first such man. Therefore, Paul’s warning is as useful today as at the end of the age. Paramount Leader Xi Jinping is one such man of lawlessness. He...

Ed Whelan ‏ @EdWhelanEPPC Following Following @EdWhelanEPPC Okay, I’ll begin laying out some information concerning Christine Blasey Ford’s allegations against Judge Kavanaugh.

On Friday morning, The New Yorker's Jane Mayer and Ronan Farrow reported on a letter alleging possible sexual misconduct by Brett Kavanaugh while he was a high-school student. According to the New Yorker: "The woman, who has asked not to be identified, first approached Democratic lawmakers in July, shortly after Trump nominated Kavanaugh. The allegation dates back to the early nineteen-eighties, when Kavanaugh was a high-school student at Georgetown Preparatory School, in Bethesda, Maryland, and the woman attended a nearby high school. In the letter, the woman alleged that, during an encounter at a party, Kavanaugh held her down, and...

--- snip --- Specifically among US Catholics, his ratings have fallen from 83% favorability a year and a half ago to 63% now -- a 20-point drop.

Top advisers to Pope Francis said on Monday that the Vatican is preparing an official response to accusations that the pope helped cover up an American cardinal’s sexual misconduct. The statement from the “C-9,” the nine cardinals who advise Francis on Church matters, came on the first day of a three-day meeting with the pope, one of several throughout the year. The Holy See’s planned response will address accusations by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò — former Vatican ambassador to the United States — that Pope Francis covered up sexual abuse by now-disgraced former cardinal Theodore McCarrick. Viganò roiled the Church...

My son masters himself as he masters the language. Every word he acquires means he’s internalizing how to navigate a new social interaction... --- snip --- Mankowski describes the difficulty of reporting abuse of any kind to a man like this: Occasionally someone manages to break through the insulation and deal with the responsible churchman himself. In this case, another maneuver is typically employed, one I tried to sketch eight years ago in an essay called “Tames in Clerical Life”: In one-on-one situations, tames in positions of authority will rarely flatly deny the validity of a complaint of corruption lodged...

Shall I tell you the most charitable, least rash explanation I can muster for Pope Francis’ recent words and behavior? It’s that he’s surrounded himself with yes men who are shielding him from understanding the depth and breadth of institutional sex abuse and its cover-up in the Church. He’s appointed, or left in office, no one but men who tell him that the world is chock full of false accusations, that the whole scandal thing is overblown, that it’s all in our past — oh, and that right now would be a good time to talk about litter in the...

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — A top official from the Vatican Secretariat of State acknowledged allegations made by a New York priest in 2000 concerning Archbishop Theodore E. McCarrick, according to a letter obtained by Catholic News Service. Father Boniface Ramsey, pastor of St. Joseph’s Church Yorkville in New York City, told CNS Sept. 7 that he received the letter dated Oct. 11, 2006, from then-Archbishop Leonardo Sandri, the former Vatican substitute for general affairs, asking for information regarding a priest of the Archdiocese of Newark who studied at Immaculate Conception Seminary and was being vetted for a post at a...

Thomas Peters @AmericanPapist 42m 42 minutes ago More Thomas Peters Retweeted Jason Calvi #ResignWatch Thomas Peters added, Jason Calvi @JasonCalvi NEW: Cardinal Wuerl will not attend this year’s Red Mass, which is a Mass calling down the Holy Spirit on the Sunday before the new #SCOTUS term opens. #CatholicTwitter… 1 reply 1 retweet 5 likes Reply 1 Retweet 1 Like 5 Direct message

Theranos Inc., the blood-testing company accused of perpetrating Silicon Valley’s biggest fraud, will soon cease to exist. In the wake of a high-profile scandal, the company will formally dissolve, according to a shareholder email. Theranos will seek to pay unsecured creditors its remaining cash in coming months, the letter said. The move comes after federal prosecutors filed criminal charges against Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and the blood-testing company’s former No. 2 executive, alleging that they defrauded investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars and defrauded doctors and patients.

September 4, 2018 (LifeSiteNews) – German national TV channel ZDF is rerunning a documentary produced last year that claims that Pope Francis, as Archbishop Bergoglio of Buenos Aires, ignored cries for justice from abuse victims in his diocese. The documentary is now gaining traction in the fallout of Archbishop Viganò’s testimony that the Pope covered-up the abuse of now ex-Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. The documentary also claims that then-Archbishop Bergoglio, prior to becoming the pope, participated in the unsuccessful defense of a priest accused of abuse. That priest has now been imprisoned for 15 years after he was found guilty of...

The Department of Justice has launched an investigation into the FBI’s handling of sexual-abuse allegations against former U.S. gymnastics team doctor Larry Nassar, people familiar with the investigation said. That move followed allegations that agents failed to act on U.S. national-team gymnasts’ complaints about Nassar when they arose in 2015.

Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 ‏ Verified account @JackPosobiec Follow Follow @JackPosobiec More #Breaking Vatican denies OAN access to McCarrick documents 0:47 9,093 views 8:15 AM - 31 Aug 2018

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis wants concrete action to combat the “emergency” of plastics littering seas and oceans. Francis made the appeal in a message Saturday to galvanize Christians and others to work to save what he hails as the “marvelous,” God-given gift of the “great waters and all they contain.” He said efforts to fight plastics litter must be waged “as if everything depended on us.”

His Excellency Christophe Pierre, Nuncio Apostolic Nunciature 3339 Massachusetts Ave NW Washington, DC 20008-3610 Dear Archbishop Pierre, Our Church is in crisis and as the leader of the Catholic faithful in the State of South Carolina, I write with urgency to express my sentiments and echo those of the people in my care. We feel betrayed, angry and misled. Something must be done now. I have several recommendations that support the statement from Cardinal Daniel N. DiNardo, President of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. It is imperative that the Holy See take a leadership role in investigating the...

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...

Here’s a theory. That’s all it is: a theory. But if I had the investigative resources, I would be looking into it. I learned this week that under John Paul II, there were three people who always showed up at the Vatican with lots of money: Father Marcial Maciel, Cardinal Bernard Law, and Archbishop Theodore McCarrick, who was made a cardinal by JP2. In 1988, McCarrick helped start the Papal Foundation, which raised money from wealthy American Catholics for the Pope’s favored projects. Last month, the Washington Post reported: “The Papal Foundation was a huge point of leverage for him...