Free Republic

“Maintain support” for traditional marriage? Catholic support requires more episcopal muscle than the release of a mild statement. Because the Church is "the universal sacrament of salvation" (Lumen Gentium), our shepherds should be mobilizing Catholics to fight back. Every Catholic priest, religious, businessman, teacher, doctor, banker, grocer, landlord, professor, and college student should be sent out with a mandate to fight for marriage. Others did send public and sober warnings. Bishop Thomas Wenski of the Diocese of Orlando wrote, In redefining the legal definition of marriage to include same-sex unions, the proponents of "gay marriage" are in effect imposing their...

SYDNEY (AFP) - - Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday urged hundreds of thousands of young Catholics to beat back a "spiritual desert" spreading through the modern world as he closed Catholic World Youth Day in Australia. The pope celebrated an open-air mass in Sydney that organisers said drew 400,000 worshippers in the climax of a week of prayer and pop concerts during which the pontiff made a historic apology for child sex abuse by clergy. In his final mass, the pope said the worshippers' youthful energy helped reinvigorate the church and urged them to become "messengers of love" to counter...

When he was a state senator in Illinois in June 2002, Barack Obama was explicitly asked by Chicago media personality Jeff Berkowitz whether he supports school vouchers. “I would support anything that is going to be better for the children of Illinois,” he said. He emphatically added that “I am not closed minded on the issue.” In February 2008, Obama spoke to reporters from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel about the issue. Still keeping an open mind, he said, “If there was any argument for vouchers, it was ‘Let’s see if the experiment works.’ And if it does, whatever my preconception,...

Protestants don’t see why Catholics who come to disagree with essential teachings of the Church don’t just leave. Adult conversion to Catholicism involves more than adding a few new beliefs. It means a whole new world and life view. No ingredient in that new perspective was more of a shock to my old Protestant sensibilities when I became a Catholic than the idea that the God-man is really present in, and not just symbolized by, what appears to be a wafer of bread and a cup of wine. It seemed scandalous! It has ceased to scandalize me, though it has...

In his column of June 24, Wall Street Journal writer William McGurn looked at the mostly NARAL-friendly Catholics named to the Obama campaign’s National Catholic Advisory Council. Noting that Obama enjoys a NARAL approval rating of 100%, and that — while in the Illinois State Senate — he voted against a measure similar in intent to the unanimously approved 2002 Federal Born Alive Act, McGurn wonders how the council and other Catholics for Obama can rationalize support for a candidate who stands in such profound contrast to the church’s firm teaching that abortion is “an intrinsic evil.” The…line of argument...

The Catholic League has launched a campaign to bring public scorn on a University of Minnesota-Morris teacher who threatened to treat a consecrated communion wafer, which Catholics believe becomes the body of Christ, "with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse." To which the professor in question, Paul Zachary Myers, responded: "Scumbags." The issue arose over an argument that didn't even involve Myers. As WND reported, a student at the University of Central Florida reported getting death threats after he stole and later returned a wafer from a Catholic Mass in Orlando.

Yesterday, Catholic League president Bill Donohue issued a news release calling attention to the plea that Paul Zachary Myers made on his blog: he solicited the Communion Host for the express purpose of desecrating it. Donohue now responds to the reaction he has received from the University of Minnesota Morris professor, as well as others: “Myers went on Houston radio station KPFT last night saying that Bill Donohue has ‘declared a fatwa’ against him. He should know better—I don’t need others to do the fighting for me. I’m quite good at it myself. But he’d better be careful what he...

The nature and extent of the violations of religious freedom were not only severe, they also were tolerated by the government and, in some cases, committed by forces within the government. As such, a bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom included Iraq on a "watch list" of countries where religious liberty is severely threatened. Religious leaders have made numerous attempts to broker resolutions. In 2007, American president George W. Bush recounted, the pontiff " was concerned that the society that was evolving (in Iraq) would not tolerate the Christian religion." Indeed, Iraqi Christians have continued to find themselves in...

I was walking around Rutgers the other day when I came upon a memorial to students who had fought in World War II. The list of names was impressive, but I imagine most major universities in America have similar memorials. It was only when I happened to walk by Old Queens that I noticed something you wouldn't see on just any campus. It was a plaque honoring the Rutgers men who had fought in the Revolutionary War. Nearby is the spot from which Alexander Hamilton directed cannon fire against the British in cover of George Washington's army. You don't see...

A controversial mosque in the Italian city of Milan is to be shut down, the country's right-wing government says. The Jenner mosque attracts about 4,000 Muslims each week, with Friday prayers often spilling out on to the street. Now, after years of complaints from local residents, Italian Interior Minister Roberto Maroni has said he will close the mosque by August. A leading Roman Catholic has accused Mr Maroni of behaving like a fascist. He has rejected that charge. Rendition The Jenner mosque is based in a converted garage. Since it opened as an Islamic cultural centre in 1988, it has...

Ending his stirring Gettysburg Address, one of our greatest Presidents, Abraham Lincoln, spoke words of hope to a war ravaged Nation. These words echo today as we celebrate Independence Day: “That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” America needs a new birth of freedom. ...Two voices tower above all the others in proclaiming the real meaning of human freedom, the late Pope John Paul II and his successor, Pope Benedict XVI. These two servants of God are...

Infanticide is becoming a touchy subject for Barack Obama. So much so that his supporters either deny that their candidate ever voted against the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, or they describe his votes as "procedural," as if Obama never really opposed providing medical treatment for infants who survived an abortion. The facts show otherwise. The Born Alive Infant Protection Act was first introduced in the Illinois legislature in 2001 after nurse Jill Stanek revealed that babies born alive in Christ Hospital in botched abortion procedures were left to die, unattended by medical personnel. That same year Stanek testified before...

In a turn of events which signals the beginning of an aggressive outreach to faith based voters, Senator Barack Obama announced that he not only supports the “Faith Based and Community Initiative”,but that he will expand it’s reach if he is elected President. Further, the Democratic candidate indicated that he will support the constitutional right of faith based groups to choose whom they hire and fire based upon the tenets of their deeply held religious convictions. Many of the Press Reports concerning this stunning announcement have referred to this endorsement of such a significant Policy initiative as a matter of...

Fr. Michael Pfleger has reappeared on the national ABC program “Good Morning America” as some type of spokesman on race who is also against gun violence being touted as having “spent the last 30 years cleaning up his impoverished south side Chicago parish, fighting the presence of poverty, drugs, gangs and gun violence..” despite the dismal reality of the St. Sabina’s neighborhood floundering in a sea of prosperity in Chicago. Mixing partisan politics with religion has been combustible combination in Chicago for generations. The media practice of using a religious persona to somehow add legitimacy to a political cause is...

You are the Democratic candidate for president. You want to reach out to Catholics. So what do you do when the majority of the elected officials on your National Catholic Advisory Council have the seal of approval from NARAL Pro-Choice America? That's the position Barack Obama now finds himself in. A few months ago, his Catholic advisory council was announced with great enthusiasm, and Sen. Bob Casey (D., Pa.) was listed as a national co-chair. His appearance at the top of the council sent a clear message: This campaign is determined to recover some of the lost Democratic sheep who...

President Bush may follow in the footsteps of his brother Jeb and convert to Catholicism, several European papers are reporting. In the wake of the president’s visit to see Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican, Italian newspapers, citing Vatican sources, said Bush was open to the idea of converting to Catholicism. The Italian newspaper Il Foglio referred to such talk about Bush’s possible conversion and stated that “anything is possible, especially for someone reborn like Bush.� Noting that Tony Blair converted to Catholicism after leaving office as Britain’s prime minister last year, the paper also stated that “if anything happens,...

As I have consistently and repeatedly said - and extensively written- I cannot and will not support any candidate who fails to hear the cry of the poorest of the poor in the first home of the whole human race, the child in the womb. In the words of the late servant of God, John Paul II, “abortion is the cutting edge of the culture of death” and it has resulted in the loss of over fifty million of our neighbors. It simply must end. The Abortion issue is for our day what the evil of slavery was for another,...

A new survey examining party affiliation and religious observance finds that Catholic support is about evenly split between the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates in the upcoming election. Due to this almost even division, non-Hispanic Catholics are considered to be “up for grabs” in the 2008 election. The survey was commissioned by the Paul B. Henry Institute for the Study of Christianity and Politics at Calvin College and conducted by Opinion Access Corp. of Long Island, New York, a prominent polling firm. It conducted a phone survey of 3,002 respondents about their political affiliation, their religious affiliation, and the level...

“On May 2, I issued a news release calling on Sen. Obama to dissolve his Catholic National Advisory Council. My principal reason for doing so was his selection of dissident Catholics to advise him: for example, most of the public officials are so pro-abortion that they had a 100 percent NARAL record." "On May 8, most members of the Advisory Council faxed me a letter defending themselves; I answered the same day taking them to task for their lame defense. But it now appears that my initial recommendation—to dissolve the group—may have been accepted." “There is no mention anywhere on...

Can a Catholic be for Barack Obama? The question has been raised by a law professor at Pepperdine University, who went from being a Mitt Romney adviser to an Obama supporter. The question is further raised by the appearance of the angry Rev. Michael Pfleger, a longtime friend of the Democratic nominee who recently preached at Obama's former Trinity church. Since this topic was recently a matter of talking heads' concerns, I was asked, in all seriousness, if Catholics can even vote. After all, war is bad. The death penalty is bad. Abortion is bad. John McCain supports the war...

WASHINGTON -- Word spread like wildfire in Catholic circles: Douglas Kmiec, a staunch Republican, firm foe of abortion and veteran of the Reagan Justice Department, had been denied communion. His sin? Kmiec, a Catholic who can cite papal pronouncements with the facility of a theological scholar, shocked old friends and adversaries alike earlier this year by endorsing Barack Obama for president. For at least one priest, Kmiec's support for a pro-choice politician made him a willing participant in a grave moral evil. Kmiec was denied communion in April at a Mass for a group of Catholic business people he later...

London, Jun 7, 2008 / 09:32 pm (CNA).- A Catholic adoption agency in Britain has ended its service of placing children in new homes because a new anti-discrimination law forbids the agency from turning away homosexual couples. A Minister of Parliament has said the new law “smacks of a secular attack on the Catholic Church.” The Equality Act, which will come into effect on January 1, outlaws discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in the provision of goods and services. Then-Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has since converted to Catholicism, wanted Catholic adoption agencies to be exempted from the...

It apparently takes more than a government investigation and the threat of fines to keep a priest in Canada from speaking his mind about biblical issues. Father Alphonse de Valk, who WND reported just days ago is the target of a Human Rights Commission case over his biblical references regarding homosexuality, now is warning of an educational agenda to be implemented in support of "gay" pairs. In a column at Catholic Insight, de Valk writes under the headline "Fascism has come to Canada" that the Department of Education in British Columbia plans in September to "introduce the mandatory teaching of...

WASHINGTON — Word spread like wildfire in Catholic circles: Douglas Kmiec, a staunch Republican, firm foe of abortion and veteran of the Reagan Justice Department, had been denied communion. His sin? Kmiec, a Catholic who can cite papal pronouncements like a theological scholar, shocked old friends and adversaries alike earlier this year by endorsing Barack Obama for president. For at least one priest, Kmiec's support for a pro-choice politician made him a willing participant in a grave moral evil. Kmiec was denied communion in April at a Mass for a group of Catholic business people he later addressed. The episode...

Communion aside, there is a Catholic-Obama problem. Many Catholics, beyond Fr. Pfleger, will vote for Obama. It's not a problem of Communion-denying magnitude, but one they should at least know going into Election Day. McCain may be imperfect, but for me, even if I didn't have a laundry list of why I'm opposed to abortion, the pope explained why a Catholic cannot vote for a candidate like Obama long before most of us ever thought Obama would be a candidate for the presidency. In a 2006 address, B16 (Benedict XVI)said: "As far as the Catholic Church is concerned, the principal...

Bobby Jindal may not yet be a household name across the entire United States. But hopefully that's about to change. At age 36, Jindal is a former member of the United States House of Representatives; a former Secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals, where he took the state agency from a $400 million deficit to a $200 million surplus without tax increases; and is now the current Republican Governor of Louisiana. Governor Jindal made national news last week when he, along with Florida Governor Charlie Crist and former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney schmoozed at John McCain’s private...

The Rev. Michael Pfleger, who helped reignite Barack Obama's pastor problems by mocking Hillary Clinton, said this evening he's received "thousands of hate threats" since his videotaped pulpit rant. "They want to kill me," Pfleger told parishioners during a service in a St. Sabina Church chapel on Chicago's South Side this evening. "It's been very ugly." The firebrand Catholic Priest made his controversial Clinton comments last Sunday at Trinity United Church of Christ, home church of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama's former pastor. Pfleger mocked Clinton for crying on the campaign trail, and suggested it was "white entitlement" leading Clinton...

Like the Buddhist monks in Burma, in Hanoi and other cities of Vietnam bishops, priests, sisters, and faithful are taking to the streets. They want buildings and land confiscated by the state to be given back. Their weapons are crosses and rosaries. The apprehensions of the Vatican by Sandro Magister ROMA, May 28, 2008 – A delegation from the Holy See will soon go to Vietnam on an official visit, for the fifteenth time since 1989. The previous visit took place just over one year ago. In his turn, the prime minister of Vietnam, Nguyên Tân Dung, visited the Vatican...

Barack and probably Michelle Obama don’t like Catholics very much, and it easy to see why. While very few Americans of any religion have any use for atrocities like partial birth abortion and infanticide, Catholics provide much of the pro-life movement’s leadership. Catholics are therefore a major threat to Obama’s political aspirations, and this doubtlessly plays a major role in Obama’s promotion of anti-Catholic hate organizations. As shown below, MoveOn.org circulated an anti-Catholic hate cartoon that is very similar to the work of the infamous 19th century cartoonist Thomas Nast. In addition, MoveOn.org’s now disgraced Action Forum welcomed the most...

Pope Benedict XVI said Saturday that the Roman Catholic Church has the indisputable right and duty to convert anyone to Christianity. The Church’s central mission is evangelism, the pope firmly told a Vatican body responsible for encouraging Catholic missionary activity, according to Agence France-Presse. Jesus Christ, as recorded in the Gospels, called on the conversion of “all nations,� Benedict said,� and this commission remains “an obligatory mandate for the entire Church and for every believer in Christ.� "This apostolic commitment is both a duty and an inalienable right, the very expression of religious freedom with its moral, social and political...

San Jose, CA., May 18, 2008 / 12:40 pm (CNA).- One week ago today leaders of the Chaldean Catholic Church in California formally received into communion a bishop of the Assyrian Apostolic Church of the East, his clergy, and about 3,000 Assyrian Christians. The Assyrian Church, centered in modern-day Iraq, dates back to the earliest days of Christianity.  According to the California Catholic Daily, the church eventually embraced the teachings of Nestorius, the fifth-century Archbishop of Constantinople whose doctrines were condemned by the Council of Ephesus in 431.  Beginning in the sixteenth century, large numbers of Nestorian Assyrians came...

A rifleman angered by a custody dispute with his ex-girlfriend opened fire Saturday at a parish school festival in Granada Hills this morning, wounding the woman and two other fair-goers before being tackled by bystanders and arrested by an off-duty police officer, authorities said. Witnesses described scenes of terror and panic as the man nonchalantly brandished a .22-caliber rifle made to look like an M-16 assault rifle and fired into booths at the fair. The shooting took place shortly before the 11 a.m. start of the festival on a baseball field on the grounds of the St. John Baptist de...

COPYING (not linking, it uses my bandwidth) and circulation is encouraged. http://www.stentorian.com/MoveOn/catholic.html for a collection of MoveOn.org's anti-Catholic hate speech. God BLESS America, McCain 2008

Veteran Democrat David Carlin knows what he’s going to do if Illinois Sen. Barack Obama becomes his party’s presidential nominee He’s going to vote for the presumptive Republican nominee, Arizona Sen. John McCain. “Any Catholic who takes the abortion issue seriously will not vote for Obama,” said Carlin, who served as majority leader of the Rhode Island Senate in 1989-90. Pro-life leaders describe Obama — who is now the heavy favorite to defeat New York Sen. Hillary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination — as the most pro-abortion presidential candidate in American history. “Based on his record he appears to...

The Rev. John C. Hagee, whose anti-Catholic remarks created a controversy when Senator John McCain received his endorsement for the Republican presidential nomination with fanfare, has issued a letter expressing regret for “any comments that Catholics have found hurtful.” The letter was issued after weeks of conversations between Mr. Hagee and Roman Catholic Republicans about repairing the damage to Mr. McCain’s campaign and the alliance built over many years between conservative Catholics and evangelicals. Mr. McCain said Tuesday that he had not been involved in brokering the apology letter from Mr. Hagee, a megachurch pastor in San Antonio who broadcasts...

The Texas megachurch pastor whose past comments about the Catholic Church have caused headaches for John McCain for over two months will issue an apology to Catholics later today, according a top Christian conservative. John Hagee, pastor of San Antonio's Cornerstone Church, will send a letter to Catholic League President William Donahue expressing "deep regret for any comments that Catholics have found hurtful." "After engaging in constructive dialouge with Catholic friends and leaders, I now have an improved understanding of the Catholic Church, its relation to the Jewish faith, and the history of anti-Catholicism," Hagee wrote in a letter running...

KEY WEST, Florida (Reuters) - White Roman Catholics have become a key base for Sen. Hillary Clinton in her quest for the Democratic presidential nomination and one she needs to win by huge margin, a conference on faith and politics heard on Monday. William Galston of the Brookings Institution presented one of the most detailed portraits to date of the Catholic vote in last month's Pennsylvania primary, which the New York senator won to keep her battle with Illinois Sen. Barack Obama alive. It is a portrait that has relevance as she campaigns before crucial primaries on Tuesday in North...

WASHINGTON (CNS) -- In an effort to block posthumous rebaptisms by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Catholic dioceses throughout the world have been directed by the Vatican not to give information in parish registers to the Mormons' Genealogical Society of Utah. An April 5 letter from the Vatican Congregation for Clergy, obtained by Catholic News Service in late April, asks episcopal conferences to direct all bishops to keep the Latter-day Saints from microfilming and digitizing information contained in those registers. The order came in light of "grave reservations" expressed in a Jan. 29 letter from the Vatican...

LAS VEGAS, NV April 29, 2008 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A visitor to the Cathedral of Las Vegas was shocked recently to see an advertisement for the Imago Dei ministry in the cathedral bulletin. Jack Fonseca, a 3rd degree member of the Knights of Columbus, has since worked to rally other Catholics to have Bishop Joseph Anthony Pepe disband the group for its infidelity to Church teaching regarding homosexuality.According to its official site, "Imago Dei was established to meet a need in the Church for support of gay Catholic women and men.  Gay people have been made to feel that they are...

Paris, Apr 29, 2008 / 12:37 pm (CNA).- The Bishops’ Conference of France has officially announced that Pope Benedict XVI will travel to France for the 150th anniversary of the Marian apparitions that took place in Lourdes. The trip, which is scheduled for September 12-15, 2008, will begin with a greeting by French officials after which the Holy Father will head to the College des Bernardins where he will address the “world of culture.”  Then the Pope will pray vespers at the Cathedral of Notre Dame.  Following the prayer service, he will address young people gathered at the Cathedral.  On...

In the run-up to Pope Benedict XVI's visit to the United States, there was a tremendous display of unseriousness at the National Press Club, followed by a sacrilege at a nearby Washington, D.C., church. A misguided group called the Women's Ordination Conference held a protest – a press conference and an all-woman "Mass" at a local Methodist church. The group, as the name suggests, wants to see "the ordination of women as priests, deacons and bishops." Sadly, the group doesn't understand women or the Catholic Church. In a prepared statement, WOC executive director Aisha Taylor declared: "The failure to ordain...

In Chris Matthews' mind, a bigot is someone who's "culturally conservative" on race. Matthews equated the two on this evening's Hardball in attempting to explain exit polling from yesterday's PA primary showing that 38% of white Catholic Democrats wouldn't vote for Obama in the general election. CHRIS MATTHEWS: Well, somebody who doesn't like that group of voters might call them Archie Bunkers. I'll call them Reagan Democrats, John [Baer of the Philadelphia Daily News], they're Reagan Democrats: people who are culturally conservative, maybe a little culturally conservative on the racial front, on the ethnic front. They like to think of...

Bishop-elect greets faithful of Denver Archdiocese Bishop-Elect James D. Conley This is the address Bishop-elect Conley delivered April 10 when the announcement of his appointment was made. I’m both honored and humbled that our Holy Father, Pope Benedict XVI, has called me to the office of bishop and appointed me auxiliary to Denver’s Archbishop Chaput. As I wrote in my letter of acceptance to the Holy Father, I am very mindful of my own unworthiness for this office, and I am deeply moved by the confidence he has placed in me. At the same time, I have always believed in...

How do you describe the most extraordinary experience of your life? It's even tricky to type when your fingers are still tingling like mine still are, hours later. Row A, Seat 1. Yeah, that guy in the Lancaster JetHawks blue road cap. He went to Mass with the pope on Thursday. And he blinked back tears watching his big sister receive Holy Communion from the 265th successor of St. Peter. Officially, of course, the rouge on his cheeks and ears and neck came courtesy of a gloriously cloudless sky over Nationals Park. (The JetHawks caps always protect the ever-more-balding 50-something...

Growing up as an evangelical in rural South Carolina, I’ve heard plenty of rabid denunciations of the Catholic church and the corrupt scheming of its untrustworthy pope. But to hear these angry rantings from Catholics, I had to come to Boston. My good friend and colleague, Margery Eagan, is in a righteous rage over the positive media coverage Pope Benedict XVI is receiving on his first - and likely only - trip to America. Watching his warm reception in Washington, many local Catholics are surly and sulking. Much to Margery’s chagrin, Americans - particularly Catholics - seem to like the...

On Tuesday's "Good Morning America," news anchor Chris Cuomo used the upcoming visit of Pope Benedict XVI to label the pontiff as uncompromising and assert that the Catholic Church sees the visit as "an opportunity for the Pope to come here and reinforce hard-line doctrine." Earlier in the segment, Cuomo described Benedict as "a hard-liner charged with protecting Catholic orthodoxy." Cuomo also went on to claim that the Pope's goal is to strike a balance "between placating conservative followers and giving hope to liberals who seek social reform." The ABC journalist went on to mention the pontiff's background and note,...

Catholic education will be front and center this week when Benedict XVI makes his first papal visit to America. On April 17, at Catholic University in Washington, DC, he will address more than 400 college, university, elementary and secondary school leaders. His subject will be the importance of Catholic education, and he'll probably argue for strict adherence to the usual orthodox Church teachings--a call for academics to behave and for bishops to insure that they do. What Benedict is unlikely to address is the failure of many in the church hierarchy to abide by another social teaching that is far...

THREE years ago, in the final weeks of Pope John Paul II's papacy, the Vatican's diplomatic service took great care to distance the Catholic Church from American foreign policy, in order to protect Christians in mainly Muslim lands from being tarred with the same brush as the Bush administration. But as his successor Pope Benedict XVI arrives on Tuesday April 15th for a five-day trip to the United States, the gap between the Vatican and America seems to have narrowed a great deal. The Vatican fear that Middle Eastern Christians would pay a high price for the perceived misdeeds of...

NEW YORK (AP) - A theologian recalls the then-cardinal's deep understanding of Protestantism. A former U.S. ambassador to the Vatican was impressed by his interest in all things American. Those who have met Pope Benedict XVI say the nation should expect a man who knows and admires much about the U.S., but also sees a culture in need of moral guidance. Benedict arrives late Tuesday for a six-day visit to Washington and New York filled with high-profile events. He will meet President Bush at the White House, address leaders in Roman Catholic higher education, speak at the U.N., visit ground...

MIAMI GARDENS, Fla. -- For 46 years, crime, recessions and hurricanes proved no threat to the daily ritual of St. Monica School, where the entire blue-and-white uniformed student body gathered outside each morning to join in prayer. Come June, though, the tradition will fade away, and "amen" will close St. Monica's morning recitations for the last time. The school, a home-away-from-home for mostly minority students, will close. As Pope Benedict XVI next week makes his first trip to the U.S. as pontiff, Catholic schools across the country, long a force in educating the underprivileged regardless of their faith, face the...