Free Republic

Video and report

Featured Term (selected at random):AMENDE HONORABLE Public form of satisfaction formerly inflicted on condemned criminals. With candle in hand, stripped to the waist and barefoot, they appeared before the ecclesiastical judge, begging pardon of God, the king and justice. It was used as late as the seventeenth century. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

Thank the LORD for Jesus Christ. The only one that shows us how to walk, talk, eat, pray, and treat one another in this life. Follow HIM and all will start to make sense in life. And all that doesn't make sense you can cast on HIM, and HE will slowly take them away and bring you to a place in your mind, body, soul, and spirit that will focus on better things for you. Let's help one another to be clean in spirit and in truth!! Believers fellowship in love, as HE loves us.

On a June evening in 1979 I was having a drink on a small balcony outside a sixth-floor apartment in downtown Warsaw with a very civilized, elderly Polish intellectual, a retired mathematics professor who had taken a degree at Cambridge between the two world wars and spoke a refined, witty, patrician English. Inside the apartment about a dozen much younger Poles, twenty-five to forty-five years old, were having a secret meeting, their voices inaudible due to the classical music being played so as to hide or muffle their discourse in case the apartment was bugged. They had each arrived separately,...

“The Pope and the Vatican should say to Georgetown, ‘You guys get your act together and straighten up and fly right or you can’t hold yourself out as a Catholic institution anymore,’” Francis T. Coleman, Georgetown ’61, told The Cardinal Newman Society. A basketball legend at Georgetown, Coleman, who goes by the name of Tom, has undergraduate and law degrees from Georgetown. He coached freshman basketball and served as the first chairman of Georgetown’s Law Alumni Board. Now, the loyal alumnus finds himself advising the campaign led by Exorcist author William Peter Blatty, Georgetown ’50, to get his alma mater...

The latest volley in Bishop Richard Williamson's war against Bishop Fellay and the Holy Father has come from Fr. Francois Chazal, a priest of the Society of Saint Pius X (SSPX)stationed in Asia. At the end of this post you will find a video and written transcript of a sermon give by Fr. Chazal that praises Bishop Williamson, a renowned Holocaust Denier, for thwarting Bishop Fellay's "plot" to sign a deal with Rome. This lengthy sermon is well worth taking time to listen to as it provides a perfect example of the ecclesiology taught within the SSPX. It would be...

May 28, 2012 Monday of the Eighth Week in Ordinary Time   Reading 1 1 Pt 1:3-9 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,who in his great mercy gave us a new birth to a living hopethrough the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,to an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading,kept in heaven for youwho by the power of God are safeguarded through faith,to a salvation that is ready to be revealed in the final time.In this you rejoice, although now for a little whileyou may have to suffer through various trials,so that the...

In the most recent messages, three times, the words "financial collapse." To: Jennifer 5/22/12 7:43 PM My child, I say to My children that mankind relies too much upon himself and it is there that you become the victim of your own sinfulness. Heed to the Commandments My children for they are your entrance into the kingdom. I weep today My children but it is those who are failing to heed to My warnings that will weep tomorrow. The winds of spring will turn into the rising dust of summer as the world will begin to look more like a...

HE is with us in all we do!! HE knows all!! We are all a work in progress!!

Seventeen men were ordained for service in the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham in London today. At the largest single ordination in the UK for many years, the men - all former Anglican clergy - were ordained as deacons at the request of Monsignor Keith Newton, the Ordinary of the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham, by Auxiliary Bishop of Westminster and former Anglican, Bishop Alan Hopes. The celebration marks the second year of ordinations for the Ordinariate, which was established in 2011 to allow Anglicans to enter into the full communion of the Catholic Church whilst...

(CNSNews.com) - Having organized 43 plaintiffs—including the archdioceses of New York and Washington and the University of Notre Dame—to file 12 different lawsuits against the Obama administration last Monday alleging the administration is violating the religious freedom of Catholics, the Catholic bishops of the United States are now preparing Catholics for what may be the most massive campaign of civil disobedience in this country since the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and early 1960s. “Some unjust laws impose such injustices on individuals and organizations that disobeying the laws may be justified,” the bishops state in a document developed to...

Extra Ecclesiam Nulla Salus Traditional True Holy Mass Propers † Dominica Pentecostes ~ Pentecost Sunday (Whit Sunday † Anno Dómini 27 May 2012 Commemorating The Feast Of † Saint Bede the Venerable, Doctor of His Church † Color: Sanguineus/Red Vestments II Classis ~ Second Class Semi-Double Observance Spíritus Dómini replévit orbem terrárum, allelúja ( "....The Spirit of the Lord hath filled the whole world, alleluia...." ) Et sermónem quem audístis, non est Meus: sed ejus qui misit Me, Patris. Hæc locútus sum vobis, apud vos manens. Paráclitus autem Spíritus Sanctus, quern mittet Pater in nómine Meo, ille vos docébit...

(CNN) -- The showdown between the Vatican and America's largest group of Catholic nuns is expected to peak this week when group leaders will meet to determine a response to the Vatican's reprimand for the group's "radical feminist themes." The church also demands major reforms from the nuns' group. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, initially surprised by the Vatican's report last month, "plans to move slowly, not rushing to judgment" when the group's 21-member board meets for three days in Washington, D.C., beginning Tuesday. "The board will conduct its meeting in an atmosphere of prayer, contemplation and dialogue and...

The counter-attack has begun. You knew it was coming, didn’t you? For weeks now the American bishops have been marching in lockstep unity, completely unanimous in their opposition to the HHS contraceptive mandate. The Catholic hierarchy has been headed into a showdown with President Obama, and not a single bishop had shown any inclination to back away from the fight. But you knew it couldn’t last. And it didn’t. This week Bishop Stephen Blaire became the first prelate to break stride, voicing his misgivings about the confrontation. Oh, Bishop Blaire wasn’t suggesting that the Catholic hierarchy should accede to the...

<p>See for yourselves the interview, given in English and accessible on YouTube under the title, “Traditionalist leader talks about his movement, Rome”. Can anybody be surprised if “his movement” is currently going through the gravest crisis of its 42 years of existence ?"</p>

May 27, 2012 Pentecost Sunday, Mass during the Day   Reading 1 Acts 2:1-11 When the time for Pentecost was fulfilled,they were all in one place together.And suddenly there came from the skya noise like a strong driving wind,and it filled the entire house in which they were.Then there appeared to them tongues as of fire,which parted and came to rest on each one of them.And they were all filled with the Holy Spiritand began to speak in different tongues,as the Spirit enabled them to proclaim. Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven staying in Jerusalem.At this...

May 26, 2012 Pentecost Sunday at the Vigil    Reading 1 Gn 11:1-9 The whole world spoke the same language, using the same words.While the people were migrating in the east,they came upon a valley in the land of Shinar and settled there.They said to one another,"Come, let us mold bricks and harden them with fire."They used bricks for stone, and bitumen for mortar.Then they said, "Come, let us build ourselves a cityand a tower with its top in the sky,and so make a name for ourselves;otherwise we shall be scattered all over the earth." The LORD came down to...

Featured Term (selected at random):GALLICAN RITE A ritual that prevailed from the fourth to the eighth centuries in Gaul. Its origin is disputed, but the ritual was most likely introduced by the first missionaries. It differed from the Roman Rite in the arrangement of the liturgical year, the elaborate ceremonial in the offering of the bread and wine, and in the fact that all Mass prayers were variable daily. Some liturgies today at Milan and Toledo bear resemblance to the Gallican rites. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with...

Believe, receive, and do your best to live HIS WORD in our daily lives. Living HIS word will be a light that is beautiful enough to draw in all people that come in contact with us. Through the love of JESUS CHRIST people will see who we are.

Fruits of the Holy Spirit They are supernatural works that manifest the presence of the Holy Spirit. Identifiable effects of the Holy Spirit.The one who performs these supernatural works recognizes God’s spiritual presence in the happiness he experiences by doing them.Others around him sense God’s spiritual presence by witnessing these good works.The Church takes its official list of the Fruits of the Holy Spirit from the Latin Vulgate Bible. In the Douay-Rheims translation: Gal 5:22 “But the fruit of the Spirit is, charity, joy, peace, patience, benignity, goodness, longanimity, mildness, faith, modesty, continency, chastity.” CharityJoyPeacePatience BenignityGoodnessLonganimityMildness FaithModestyContinenceChastity

Doctors who refuse to give contraceptives to unmarried women or carry out sex change operations face being banned from practicing under new guidelines.The General Medical Council has issued guidance warning that it would be “discriminatory” for doctors not to prescribe either the pill or morning-after pill because they disagree with people having sex before marriage. Senior Catholic bishops and campaigners have criticised the new orders claiming they will force Christian doctors and others with strong moral beliefs to prescribe treatments against their consciences. The draft GMC guidelines, entitled Personal Beliefs and Medical Practice, stipulate that doctors “cannot be willing to...

Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna believes the small but growing number of faithful Catholic families in Europe can win the continent back to the Christian faith. “I see our young, believing families with four or five or six or more children and how they live in the midst of this society – they are really the New Evangelization not through words, but through the fact of living the happiness of a believing family,” he told CNA May 14 in Rome. “We are now a minority – the baptized Christians in Austria are 70 percent but practicing Catholics are 10 percent...

I have an obligation as an Unreconstructed Ossified Manualist to remind (or in many cases teach) you about something before the big Memorial Day (PENTECOST) weekend.The manualist I sometimes cite, Fr. Adolphe Tanquerey, writes about temptation in The Spiritual Life. (Great, clear book.  He doesn’t fool around.  UK link HERE.)I found a brief exposition of temptation, citing Tanquerey and Augustine, in the new Manual of Minor Exorcisms: The moral theologian Adolfe Tanquerey quotes the teaching of St Augustine to explain the three phases of temptation – suggestion, pleasure and consent.He says, “Suggestion consists in the proposal to some evil.  Our...

It is a sign of the times that the Trayvon Martin case is waning away from public attention, and that the U.S. Catholic bishops have not addressed the fundamental issues of racial justice at stake for the nation. A failure to address the social structures and culture that is death-dealing for African-American and Latino men and women in America -- the context for the Feb. 26 killing of Martin -- is a “supreme dishonor to the Creator” in terms of the most basic tenet of Catholic social teaching: that we are all made in the image and likeness of God....

May 26, 2012   Memorial of Saint Philip Neri, Priest   Reading 1 Acts 28:16-20, 30-31 When he entered Rome, Paul was allowed to live by himself,with the soldier who was guarding him. Three days later he called together the leaders of the Jews.When they had gathered he said to them, "My brothers,although I had done nothing against our peopleor our ancestral customs,I was handed over to the Romans as a prisoner from Jerusalem.After trying my case the Romans wanted to release me,because they found nothing against me deserving the death penalty.But when the Jews objected, I was obliged to...

150 Titles of Christ from the ScripturesBy: Msgr. Charles Pope There are many, many titles of Christ in both the New and Old Testaments. As one prays and studies them, they amount to a mini-Catechesis of the Lord Jesus.Presented below are over 150 titles of Christ. I have also presented “hot-links” to the Scriptures from which they are drawn for your further study. The list is compiled from various sources, but most come from The Catholic Source Book, compiled and edited by Fr. Peter Klein. I have also placed this article in PDF Format here: The Titles of Jesus Christ...

7 Reasons To Be Thankful For The Holy Spirit May 17th, 2012by Gary Zimak.  If we were to poll Catholics and ask which of the 3 Persons of the Trinity they LEAST understood, the odds are good that the Holy Spirit would be the most popular answer. While most of know something about God the Father and God the Son, the mysterious God the Holy Spirit can be rather vague. As we prepare for the great solemnity of Pentecost, let’s take a look at the Holy Spirit and examine 7 reasons to be thankful for His presence in our lives.Before...

The Friend Closest to Your Heart How well do you know the Holy Spirit? By: Alan Schreck Jesus’ way of presenting the Holy Spirit made it evident that his followers were supposed to relate to the Spirit as a teacher, a counselor, a consoler—as someone who would help and guide them in their daily lives as Christians. In the Acts of the Apostles, we saw that Christ’s followers were in a dialogue with the Spirit, who actively directed and assisted them in their missionary activity. They knew the Spirit as the gift of Jesus and the Father to help...

MINNEAPOLIS, MINNESOTA, May 24, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The Minnesota Catholic Conference has condemned attempts to “divide” Catholics in the state after three retired Catholic priests and 80 former priests penned letters criticizing the Catholic Church’s support for a state amendment defining marriage as the union of a man and a woman. In a letter originally sent to the Minnesota Star Tribune - which declined to publish it - and subsequently published by Minnesota Public Radio, retired Revs. John Brandes, Thomas Garvey, and Timothy Power said that the Minnesota Marriage Amendment, which will be on the November 2012 ballot, would “deny...

Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, former president of the Vatican Bank. Vatican City, May 25, 2012 / 10:17 am (CNA/EWTN News).- The President of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, has been fired from his post following a vote of no-confidence by the bank's supervisory board. “Over time this area had generated increasing worries among the members of the board and, despite repeated efforts to communicate these concerns to Professor Gotti Tedeschi, President of the Works of Religion, the situation deteriorated further,” read a communiqué issued by the Vatican May 25. “Following discussion of the issues, the board members voted unanimously in...

Cardinal Koch's speech in Jerusalem

Shocking pictures caused exhibition to be cancelled- just....

On the Holy Spirit's Prayer in Us: 'Abba! Father!' "God has inscribed Himself in our hearts" VATICAN CITY, MAY 23, 2012 (Zenit.org).- Here is a translation of the Italian-language catechesis Benedict XVI gave during the general audience held in St. Peter’s Square. Today the Holy Father continued his series of catecheses on prayer. * * * Dear brothers and sisters, Last Wednesday I showed how St. Paul says that the Holy Spirit is the great teacher of prayer and teaches us to address God with the affectionate words of children, calling Him “Abba, Father�. This is what Jesus did; even...

Featured Term (selected at random):FOURTH CRUSADE Considered the most important of the Crusades in terms of lasting results (1202-4). The crusade was preached by Pope Innocent III. Its political effect was to conquer Constantinople, but only at the cost of embittering the Eastern Christians. They mistakenly charged the pope with responsibility for the pillage of churches and massacre of the people by the Venetian-paid crusaders' army. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

Historian Explains History and Significance of the Ukrainian ChurchROME, MAY 24, 2012 (Zenit.org).- Following the recent ad limina visit of bishops from the Eastern Catholic Churches of the United States, ZENIT asked a historian to shed light on the history and culture of the Ukrainian Church, the largest Eastern Church in the US. A native of Canada, Father Athanasius McVay is a Ukrainian-Greek Catholic priest and historian who lives and works in Rome. He is chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Toronto, Canada, and specializes in the Holy See's diplomacy and the Eastern Catholic Churches in the 19th...

If a thing is worth doing at all, it’s worth doing badly. This paradoxical witticism of Chesterton was on my mind as I sat down to watch The War of the Vendée, a new film about the forgotten martyrs of the French Revolution. I was pleased that a film had been made to honour the heroes of the Vendée but I feared that it would be a really bad film. Certainly everything seemed to suggest that it would be awful. It was made with a miniscule budget and a cast of dozens as opposed to thousands. How could a couple...

Fr Thaddeus Ma Daqin, vicar general of the Diocese of Shanghai, and 40 priests celebrated Mass. A large number of plainclothes police monitored worshippers from other dioceses during the pilgrimage month. In Hebei, an underground priest and seminarian are arrested. Mgr Paul Li Yi, bishop of Luan (Changzhi, Shanxi) dies.Sheshan (AsiaNews) - Thousands of pilgrims from Shanghai and across the country have gathered to pray at the Our Lady of Sheshan Basilica today, 24 May, feast day of Mary Help of Christians, anniversary of the Day of Prayer for the Church in China set aside by Pope Benedict XVI in...

The U.S. Catholic Church will hold an event this summer called "Fortnight for Freedom" to bring attention to religious freedom issues. The Christian Post has learned that discussions are underway to include evangelical organizations with these events. Evangelical organizations have expressed solidarity with Catholic leaders who oppose the Obama administration's birth control mandate, which, they argue, is a religious freedom issue. In separate interviews, Sister Mary Ann Walsh, a spokesperson for the USCCB, and Galen Carey, vice president for government relations at the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), both confirmed that discussions have taken place on how evangelicals might coordinate...

I’ve had the misfortune to run into a very few minutes of Dan Brown’s extended stage interview from Portsmouth NH Friday night May 18 that was part of today May 22 “Word of Mouth” radio program on NHPR Word of Mouth 11:01 am Thu May 24, 2012 It is available here in two parts, each under a half hour. http://www.nhpr.org/post/writers-new-england-stage-dan-brown-1 Writers on a New England Stage: Dan Brown By Virginia Prescott International bestselling author Dan Brown talks about science, religion, and life after the Da Vinci Code at a benefit performance for Writers on a New England Stage, live from...

May 25, 2012   Friday of the Seventh Week of Easter   Reading 1 Acts 25:13b-21 King Agrippa and Bernice arrived in Caesareaon a visit to Festus.Since they spent several days there,Festus referred Paul's case to the king, saying,"There is a man here left in custody by Felix.When I was in Jerusalem the chief priests and the elders of the Jewsbrought charges against him and demanded his condemnation.I answered them that it was not Roman practiceto hand over an accused person before he has faced his accusersand had the opportunity to defend himself against their charge.So when they came together...

It was reported Cardinal Meisner was about to ban Bishop Gaillot from Cologne Archdiocese....

They sue a Green Party politician for his statements about Bishop Williamson and their attitude to Islam

This half hour EWTN program is well worth your time. Watch it on YouTube here:For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristeros

The Vatican has published rules to evaluate the authenticity of the dozens of apparitions of the Virgin Mary reported each year. The “Norms Regarding the Manner of Proceeding in the Discernment of Presumed Apparitions or Revelations� have been in use since 1978, but until now had been available only in Latin, never officially published and only circulated among bishops and specialists. The Vatican document has now been translated into English and other languages to aid bishops in the “difficult task of discerning presumed apparitions, revelations, messages or ... extraordinary phenomena of presumed supernatural origin,� Cardinal William Levada, the head of...

Well, I mostly agree with Brent Bozell: Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell [says] The broadcast networks “all but spiked the largest legal action in history to defend our constitutionally protected religious freedom,” [he cited] CBS, ABC and NBC for skimming over news that 43 Catholic dioceses and organizations filed a lawsuit Monday against the Obama administration.CBS managed to air 19 seconds on the subject. But that was it, between all three networks.“This is the worst bias by omission I have seen in the quarter-century history of the Media Research Center,” he says, insisting that the networks fear the lawsuit...

Featured Term (selected at random):LAW OF CONSCIENCE The natural law as it manifests itself within each person's conscience, where its dictates are expressed by certain basic tendencies of nature, evaluated and regulated by right reason. It is binding in conscience as the fundamental source of moral duty. Human law, on the other hand, is binding only insofar as it agrees with the natural law of conscience. All human beings are subject to the law of conscience, no matter when or where they live. It is, therefore, universal and unchangeable. No one can dispense from its observance, which becomes binding as...

Focus on HIM.

Cardinal Donald Wuerl is archbishop of Washington.From an early age, Catholics are taught to see God in their neighbor. The Catholic faith finds its fullest expression in a loving act of sacrifice by one stranger for another. Imagine the church’s surprise, then, to be told by the federal government that when a Catholic organization serves its neighbors, it isn’t really practicing its religion. That is the unacceptable principle at the heart of a mandate, issued in February by the Department of Health and Human Services, that requires religious organizations to provide health-care coverage for abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives and sterilization procedures,...

Thursday, May 24th is a day dedicated in a special way to the liturgical memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Help of Christians, venerated with great devotion at the Shrine of Sheshan in Shanghai. That’s what Pope Benedict said on Sunday after praying the Regina Coeli in Saint Peter's Square adding how we can join in prayer with all Catholics who are in China, so that they may announce with humility and joy the Risen Christ, be faithful to his Church and the Successor of Peter and live their daily life in a manner consistent with the faith we profess....

The Vatican’s head delegate to the World Health Assembly said that while the Church supports universal health care access, states must respect and welcome the efforts of the private sphere in achieving that goal. In each nation, “the progress towards universal coverage cannot be the effort of the state machinery alone. It requires support from the civil society and communities, whose contribution to health service delivery is fundamental,” Archbishop Zygmunt Zimowski said in his May 23 address to the World Health Assembly. The assembly is the forum through which the World Health Organization is governed by its 194 member states....