Free Republic

President Joe Biden is expected to take action ensuring federally funded abortion for government employees, including tax-payer-funded leave to "cover absences for reproductive health care." The order appears to be a direct response to demands from leading Democrats in the House, Senate and Hollywood for Biden to go on offense and do whatever he can to keep the abortion industry chugging along. Imagine if Biden had the same rapid-response operation mobilized to protect the free flow of oil and gas in this country. There's been no sense of urgency from the somnambulant one as Americans face historically astronomical gas prices....

Archbishop Joseph Naumann of Kansas doesn’t mince any words in a new editorial he posted on the web site of the Catholic archdiocese he heads. He says Hillary Clinton’s running mate Time Kaine is just a “cafeteria Catholic” because he supports abortion.

Charlotte Catholic High School is getting backlash from students and parents after a school assembly last week. Students said that a guest speaker discussed offensive material about divorce and homosexuality. Sister Jane Dominic, with Aquinas College in Nashville, has a doctorate in sacred theology. But her message about the influence divorce has on gender identification and homosexuality didn't go over so well.... In an online petition, which now has close to 1,800 signatures, one student wrote "we found some of (the) ideas expressed to be both offensive and unnecessarily derogatory. We are incensed that you knew the content of this...

Back in September, Damon Linker wrote in the New Republic that liberal Catholics were likely to become disillusioned with Pope Francis, because the Pope was not likely to change Catholic doctrines. Now, writing in The Week, he reports that he’s even more concerned, because liberal Catholics don’t seem to care. Linker, in case you’re wondering, is generally quite sympathetic to liberal Catholics. But he’s upset by the “gushing commentary” on the new Pope, because he sees no real prospects for the “doctrinal reforms” that are his fondest hope. There are too many “institutional obstacles,” he believes, to allow for changes...

Amid all the smirking, chortling, and "give me a break, kid" sniggering that ill-mannered Joe Biden exhibited at the 2012 vice presidential debate, when he piously explained his stance on abortion, he exposed in totality the hypocrisy of liberal thinking. Toward the end of the debate, Biden's friend and one time houseguest, moderator Martha Raddatz, posed the following question to the candidates: "We have two Catholic candidates ... [a]nd I would like to ask you both to tell me what role your religion has played in your own personal views on abortion[.]" After Paul Ryan expressed how personal faith impacts...

Betrayal -- that's what living a cafeteria lifestyle means, so it's hard to feel too sorry for proud, self-proclaimed "cafeteria Catholic" Maria Shriver who is experiencing the reality of betrayal from her cafeteria husband. In 2008, Shriver told the world, via the Washington Post's religion blog, that she chooses what she wants from Church teaching: "Even though I consider myself a Catholic in good standing, I disagree with a lot of the teachings of the Church....I don’t believe that if someone’s divorced they shouldn’t get Communion; I don’t believe that people who are gay shouldn’t be accepted into the...

Congressional candidate George Gaulrapp has been selling himself as a "conservative Democrat" ever since he declared support for Barack Obama in the summer of 2007. The problem is that like so many operating under that label, he wants to do the "I'm pro-life personally but..." tap dance. At a recent Tea Party panel in Huntley, Gaulrapp performed this tap dance, but then added something...well, if you'll forgive the term, "extraordinary." Gaulrapp mentions that he is an extraordinary minister, which means he is able to deliver communion to fellow Catholics who are unable to attend mass. To hear his explanation, go...

In an appearance on the NBC program Meet the Press on Sunday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a self-professed Catholic, denied that the Catholic Church condemns abortion. Referring to Barack Obama's now-notorious answer to Pastor Rick Warren to the question of when life begins, Meet the Press moderator Tom Brokaw asked Pelosi, "Senator Obama saying the question of when life begins is above his pay grade…If he were to come to you and say, 'Help me out here, Madame Speaker. When does life begin?' what would you tell him?" Pelosi responded by sidestepping the question, appealing to her Catholic faith as...

Saint Louis (AP) -- An invitation to Sen. Claire McCaskill to speak at her daughter's graduation from a Roman Catholic high school was withdrawn because of her positions on abortion and stem cell research. Students at all-girls St. Joseph's Academy in the St. Louis suburb of Frontenac wanted to have McCaskill speak at their commencement this month, McCaskill spokeswoman Adrianne Marsh said Tuesday. But the offer was rescinded last week. The president of St. Joseph's, Sister Michaela Zahner, said she reluctantly made the decision after receiving a call from the St. Louis Archdiocese. . . . The senator was told...

Luke 10:13-16 Jesus said to them: "Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty deeds done in your midst had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would long ago have repented, sitting in sackcloth and ashes. But it will be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon at the judgment than for you. And as for you, Capernaum, 'Will you be exalted to heaven? You will go down to the netherworld.'" Whoever listens to you listens to me. Whoever rejects you rejects me. And whoever rejects me rejects the one who sent me." Introductory Prayer: Jesus,...

On Sunday Pope Benedict XVI spoke of the necessity of Catholics to accept the whole of the faith.  "Dear brothers and sisters how necessary it is today at the dawn of the third millennium for the entire Catholic community to proclaim, teach and witness to the entire truth of Catholic faith, doctrine and morals in a unanimous and harmonious manner!," he stressed.His comments came as he spoke of the recently completed abbreviated Catechism known as the Compendium of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.  The Compendium, in addition to proclaiming the church's popular teachings on the necessity of caring for...

As Chad Kingsbury watches his daughter playing in the sandbox behind their suburban Chicago house, the thought that has flashed through his mind a million times in her two years of life comes again: Chloe will never be sick. Not, at least, with the inherited form of colon cancer that has devastated his family, killing his mother, her father and her two brothers, and that he too may face because of a genetic mutation that makes him unusually susceptible. By subjecting Chloe to a genetic test when she was an eight-cell embryo in a petri dish, Mr. Kingsbury and his...

The controversial belief system that counts movie stars Tom Cruise and John Travolta as devotees is winning support from a Liberal member of Parliament. Toronto-area MP Derek Lee appears in a recruiting video used by the Church of Scientology to attract new members in the United States. Some critics have denounced Scientology as a brainwashing cult that harasses its opponents and exploits the vulnerable for financial gain. But Mr. Lee says he supports some of the group's programs and is particularly impressed by its approach to rehabilitating drug addicts. "I'm way past the point of viewing them as just a...

My Letter The disappointment of Cafeteria Catholics and the Liberal Media Establishment to the election of Pope Benedict XVI is sadly, not surprising. They seemed shocked that the Holy Spirit would choose a Catholic to lead the Catholic Church. But then, they are prisoners of the “dictatorship of Relativism” where there is no absolute truth, no absolute right and wrong. Catholic Doctrine is unchangeable. Moral Truth does not change because of the desires of our age or because it is inconvenient. It stands throughout the winds of time as a beacon of Truth. Abortion will always be intrinsically evil. Women...

April 12 - I was waiting outside Senator Ted Kennedy's office not long ago, listening to one side of a conversation on a subject on which one side is all anyone ever seems to hear. "Yes, Ma'am, he is Catholic,'' the young man answering the senator's phone that day told the caller wearily. "The senators are not doctors, Ma'am, with the exception of Bill Frist...And I think one of them is a veterinarian...I'm sorry you feel that way, Ma'am...The Pope has met him on several occasions and he considers him Catholic.'' Yes, the aide sighed as he hung up, he...

April 11, 2004 Kerry Ignores Reproaches of Some BishopsBy KATHARINE Q. SEELYE OSTON, April 11 — Rejecting the admonitions of several national Roman Catholic leaders, Senator John Kerry received communion at Easter services today at the Paulist Center here, a kind of New Age church that describes itself as "a worship community of Christians in the Roman Catholic tradition" and that attracts people drawn to its dedication to "family religious education and social justice."Mr. Kerry's decision to receive communion represented a challenge to several prominent Catholic bishops, who have become increasingly exasperated with politicians who are Catholic but who deviate...

St. Louis - Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry is quoting the Bible to question President Bush's claim to be a compassionate conservative. Kerry campaigned from the pulpit today at New North Side Baptist Church in St. Louis. He told worshipers, ``The Scriptures say, 'What does it profit, my brother, if someone says he has faith but does not have works?''' The Massachusetts senator added, ``When we look at what is happening in America today, where are the works of compassion?'' Kerry noted that three (m) million jobs have been lost since President Bush [related, bio] took office. Kerry is Roman...