Free Republic

Catholics in America make up about 25 percent of the population. Yet when it comes to negative stereotypes of religion, Hollywood targets us almost 100 percent of the time. Nowhere is this more true than with gay-themed entertainment. The hostility shown toward all things Catholic made us wary when we heard about ABC's miniseries on the history of the gay rights movement, "When We Rise." As last night's opening episode confirmed, we were right to be on guard.

MEXICO CITY: The Catholic Church in Mexico on Sunday accused the government of adopting an attitude of fear and "submission" over US President Donald Trump's immigration measures, which it labeled "terrorism." Mexican authorities "only make declarations and promises, their reactions are lukewarm and they also show fear and even worse, submission," read an editorial in the Church's From the Faith weekly. The editorial, entitled "Migrant Terrorism," criticized Trump's immigration measures, which aim to expel millions of undocumented migrants from the United States. The Trump administration issued tough new orders Tuesday for a sweeping crackdown on illegal immigrants, putting nearly all...

One of the newest “social warriors” is a 13 year old seventh grade girl who currently attends a private Catholic school in New Jersey only because a judge has ordered the school to rescind its order expelling her. Of course the media sides with a selfish family that doesn’t care about anything but its own satisfaction; but when do the constitutional rights of a religious institution prevail? Here are the facts. The girl, who is described as an excellent basketball player, was not able to play for her school this year because it was not fielding a girls’ team in...

Pope Francis needs to take tougher action against the United States’ most influential Catholic in Rome, Cardinal Raymond “Breitbart” Burke. The renegade cleric is not only undermining Francis’s reformist, compassionate papacy, and gospel teaching as it applies to refugees and Muslims, but the rebel prince of the church is also using his position within the walls of the Vatican to legitimize extremist forces that want to bring down Western liberal democracy, Stephen K. Bannon-style. Simply put, the Vatican is facing a political war between the modernizing Pope Francis and a conservative wing that wants to reassert white Christian dominance. Burke...

Teaching about Islam taught me many things. I enjoyed being a priest helping the people for some years. However, deep inside I was not happy and I felt that there was something not right. Fortunately, and it is God’s will, some events and coincidences in my life led me to Islam. I used to think of Egypt as a country of Pyramids, camels, sand and palm trees. I actually took a charter flight to Hurghada. Shocked to find it similar to some European beaches, I took the first bus to Cairo where I spent the most wonderful week in my...

In honor of National Catholic Schools Week, President Donald Trump is praising the nation’s Catholic educators as “vital to our success and prosperity as a country.” The president states: In recognition of National Catholic Schools Week, I want to extend my heartfelt appreciation to all of the dedicated Catholic school administrators, teachers, priests, and support organizations who work tirelessly to build and sustain quality Catholic schools across the Nation.

The New York Times and the U.S. bishops appear to have very different understandings of President Trump's motivations, but do seem to arrive at an equally negative conclusion. First, here is Times' editor David Leonhardt's take, titled "Trump Flirts With Theocracy": Let’s not mince words. President Trump’s recent actions are an attempt to move the United States away from being the religiously free country that the founders created — and toward becoming an aggressively Christian country hostile to other religions. ... On Friday afternoon, of course, Trump signed an executive order barring refugees and citizens of seven majority Muslim countries...

Francis, Parolin continued, has “taken a very great role of leadership in the global issues of the present world. And he is recognized as such, as a global leader… which was very clear in the process of climate change….”

As President-elect Donald Trump's campaign manager, Mrs. Kellyanne Conway helped pull off one of the most stunning political victories in U.S. history. So, why do the feminists hate her? Why isn't she being praised as a feminist icon by CNN or the gals from The View? Could it be because Kellyanne Conway is outspokenly pro-life?  And here's another hopeful sign:  President Donald Trump's top advisor will be an Irish-American, happily married Catholic mother of four who makes breakfast every morning for her kids and then goes to Mass. She's a daily communicant! And there's more: Kellyanne Conway reportedly took Donald Trump to meet Father George Rutler, the Anglican...

You only think you know what won the election for Donald Trump. Hillary’s corruption? The betrayal of the American Dream? Vladimir Putin? Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Let me tell you the real story, and the person behind it. Elections are won by the marginal voter, the swing voter, the guy right at 50 percent. And in American politics he’s generally a Catholic. That’s the story this time, too. It wasn’t the white Evangelicals. They went overwhelmingly for Trump, but that was also true in 2012 when they weren’t even sure Romney was Christian. They aren’t the swing voters. Catholics, on the...

Remember the rule: in Muslim countries, be careful to conform your behavior to Muslim sensibilities. And in non-Muslim countries, be careful to conform your behavior to Muslim sensibilities. A priest in Italy has caused uproar after announcing there would be no Christmas nativity scene at the local cemetery this year because it could offend Muslims and atheists.

On Dec. 4, the second Sunday of Advent on the Christian calendar, Fox's "Family Guy" mocked two-thirds of the Holy Trinity as only Fox can. In atheist Seth MacFarlane's gag, Jesus Christ had a human son who he mocked for being bullied at school, comparing that to the horror of the Crucifixion. When his son called him a "dick," he suggested that God the Father was a bigger "dick" for sending him to his death. On that same day, The New York Times ran an enormous article that sprawled over three pages of the Arts & Leisure section with the...

The good news is that an impressive number of Catholics ignored the Vatican, Francis, the antipope, and all parties named above by voting for Donald Trump rather than Clinton on November 8. Now that the outcome of Election 2016 has been determined, guess where that leaves a participating Satan? Dumped flat onto his ever-going keester; stalled on the road for the time being and abandoned in the middle of nowhere, where he truly belongs.

Much has been made of Donald Trump’s problems with a few voting groups — female voters, blacks and Hispanics, and young voters, in particular. And, to be sure, they are all problems. But relatively speaking, his biggest problem actually appears to be with a different group: Catholics. Yes, the man who once feuded with the pope (how soon we forget that actually happened) is cratering among Catholics.

In 2016, most of the polls were wrong, period. And polls predicting that Hillary Clinton would run away with the Catholic vote proved more wishful than accurate. In the run-up to the election, only the IBD-TIPP poll consistently pointed to a Trump win among Catholics, as CRUX noted last week. Almost all the others suggested a significant margin of victory for Clinton. Now that the voting is over, however, preliminary results indicate Trump decisively won a majority of those self-identifying as Catholics, by 52 to 45 percent. By contrast, President Barack Obama won Catholics narrowly, by a margin of 50...

Despite most surveys putting Clinton solidly ahead with Catholic voters, one top daily tracking poll is now showing Trump with a lead, often by double digits. As of Nov. 2, it had Trump ahead of Clinton among Catholics by 13 percentage points – 50 percent to 37 percent. Over and over again, public opinion polls have showed Hillary Clinton ahead with Catholic voters. Like everything else in this topsy-turvy election, however, that trend is less clear than it seems, and may have shifted in recent days. Historically, whoever wins the Catholic vote wins the presidency. It’s seen as a key...

The Vatican and China have reached a deal that would be a major step towards normalizing relations between the Catholic Church and the world's largest formally atheist regime, The Wall Street Journal reports. All that's needed for the deal to go through is the final nod from Pope Francis and President Xi Jinping. To call this a bombshell would be an understatement. In this deal, the Catholic Church would recognize eight bishops who have been ordained by the Chinese government without the Vatican's permission. China's regime has set up a state-run and state-sponsored "Catholic Church" that competes with the underground...

It seems referring to the Catholic Church as a “Middle Ages dictatorship” and religious Americans as “backwards” might just cost you in the polls. Donald Trump is up 13 points against Hillary Clinton among American Catholics, according to a new IBD/TIPP Presidential Election Tracking Poll out Nov. 2. The same poll reports that Trump is up 22 points with American Protestants. This stunning new poll is a dramatic change from numbers reported earlier, particularly before the Clinton campaign’s disparaging emails about Catholics were leaked. In the now infamous “Catholic Spring” emails, Sandy Newman, president and founder of the progressive nonprofit...

This week the American Civil Liberties Union filed a complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights demanding that it force Catholic hospitals to sterilize patients. The complaint alleges that the refusal to provide a service the religiously supported hospitals deem a violation of their faith is unlawful discrimination against women. ACLU spokesman Bertram Petty asserted that "religious dogma must yield to the government's right to determine what kinds of medical procedures are essential human rights under the Affordable Care Act. The government represents everyone. The Catholic Church represents a minority. Clearly, democracy requires that...

EWTN: Donald Trump In His Most Revealing Interview Yet! Irondale, AL, Oct. 25, 2016 -- At 8 p.m. ET, Thursday, Oct. 27, EWTN’s “The World Over” with Host Raymond Arroyo will air an exclusive interview with Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump, which will be of interest to people across the United States. “He reveals the reason he switched his position on the life issue, talks about religious liberty, and speaks to women’s concerns about his candidacy. We also spoke about his prayer life, whether he has a favorite saint, and a lot more.” Said Arroyo: “Honestly, this is the most...