Free Republic

Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on Twitter’s attack on free speech: Catholic World Report (CWR) is a respectable Catholic media outlet and a publication of Ignatius Press. On January 24, it received notice from Twitter that its account has been locked for hateful conduct. CWR appealed but lost. What was the alleged hate speech? CWR journalist Matt Hadro posted the following tweet on January 19. “Biden plans to nominate Dr. Rachel Levine, a biological man identifying as a transgender woman who has served as Pennsylvania’s health secretary since 2017, to be HHS Assistant Secretary for Health. Levine is also...

Terrorist groups and lone wolves might make life very uncomfortable for us, but the thought of America turning into an Islamic society is difficult to entertain. But is it really so far fetched? (us.fotolia.com | morgan rauscher) Some places in Europe—Parisian suburbs, areas of Brussels, all of Sweden—are well on their way to Islamization. But the possibility that this could happen in America may seem remote. Our Muslim population is small, the Middle East is oceans away, our military is powerful, and our police are well-trained. Terrorist groups and lone wolves might make life very uncomfortable for us, but the...

A new book reveals that Pope Pius XII was intimately involved in a plot to kill Hitler. His contacts with German Catholics from the days when he was Apostolic Nuncio put him in a unique position to orchestrate the overthrow of the tyrant. Today, it's difficult to imagine a pope strategizing the downfall of a dictator. But it's also difficult for us to imagine the terror that gripped Europe at that time. Extreme times call for extreme measures that are rarely contemplated in peace time... ...With all their good intentions, some bishops seem to have forgotten that the peaceable kingdom...

View of interior of the catacombs of Saint Gennaro in Naples. (us.fotolia.com | dudlajzov) At Christmas 1969, Professor Joseph Ratzinger gave a radio talk with the provocative title, “What Will the Future Church Look Like?” (You can find it in Faith and the Future, published by Ignatius Press). One of the concluding paragraphs was destined to become perhaps the most quoted excerpt from Ratzinger’s extensive bibliography, when Professor Ratzinger became Pope Benedict XVI: “From the crisis of today a new Church of tomorrow will emerge – a Church that has lost much. She will become small and will have...

The founder of Daughters of Mary, Mother of Israel’s Hope, discusses her conversion from Judaism, religious habits, family life, and current social upheaval Left: Presentation of Jesus in the Temple (www.motherofisraelshope.org); right: Mother Miriam of the Lamb of God, O.S.B. on Sept. 8, 2011, when the Daughters of Mary, Mother of Israel's Hope became a public association of the faithful under Bishop Edward Slattery of Tulsa. Mother Miriam of the Lamb of God, O.S.B. is founder of Daughters of Mary, Mother of Israel’s Hope (www.motherofisraelshope.org), a new religious congregation currently headquartered in the Diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma, under the leadership...

Why are so many straight people pro gay? Because the normalization of homosexuality is the premier achievement of heterosexual ideology. “Gay” and “straight” are not taxonomies but ideologies. They are not orientations but disorientations: whether bi-, homo-, or hetero-, hyphenated sexuality makes us lose our sense of direction toward the truly sexual, and the victims of such ideology are children.The words “homosexual” and “heterosexual” are nineteenth-century neologisms made to sever romance from responsibility and sex from fecundity. “Heterosexuality was made to serve as this fanciful framework’s regulating ideal,” writes Michael Hannon, summarizing Foucault, “preserving the social prohibitions against sodomy...

The priest who was the inspiration for Chesterton's great detective also played a central role in the conversion of Chesterton and many others Crime fiction fans are well aware of G.K. Chesterton’s Father Brown and his place in the Pantheon of great detectives. Nevertheless, in contrast with the seemingly endless speculation as to the ‘real Sherlock Holmes’, there has been little such debate about the origin of the priest sleuth. However, a recent book, The Elusive Father Brown (Gracewing, 2010), by Laura Smith, goes some way to rectifying this, detailing as it does the life of the cleric who formed...

The contemporary sexual revolution is thoroughly Gnostic, attacking the institution of marriage, thwarting the conception of children, and denying the differences between men and women “Temptation of Jesus Christ” (1901-03) by Ilya Repin [WikiArt.org] There is a tale, whose threads are too long to unravel here, of the meanderings of an idea through history—the idea that, as Nicolas Gómez-Davila parsed it, man is “a god imprisoned in the dull inertia of his flesh, or a god who elevates matter as his cry of victory.” This is the “knowledge” of both the old and the new Gnostics: We are not who...

Pope Francis elevates the Eucharist during Mass outside the Basilica of St. John Lateran in observance of the feast of Corpus Christi in Rome June 4. (CNS photo/Paul Haring) Readings: • Ex 24:3-8 • Psa 116:12-13, 15-16, 17-18 • Heb 9:11-15 • Mk 14:12-16, 22-26 I’ve written several times about the centrality of the Eucharist in the decision made by my wife and I when we decided to become Catholic. Our recognition, by God’s grace, of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ in the Blessed Sacrament was not sudden; I would be hard pressed to think of an...

Both Jenner and the adoring media are falling prey to one of the oldest, gravest sins: idolatry, the worshiping of false gods which we ourselves have crafted. "The Adoration of the Golden Calf" (L'Adoration du Veau d'or) by Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665) [WikiArt.org] By now, the hubbub over Bruce Jenner's Vanity Fair cover has reached most ears. And eyes. After extensive surgery and hormone treatment, with the aid of heavy makeup and Photoshop, Jenner posed in a corset as "Caitlyn" for Vanity Fair's exclusive 22-page article on his transition from a man to a woman.   Effusive praise for "Caitlyn" Jenner flooded the internet...

"Trinity" (Троица) by Andrei Rublev (c. 1410) [WikiArt.org] Readings: • Dt 4:32-34, 39-40 • Psa 33:4-5, 6, 9, 18-19, 20, 22 • Rom 8:14-17 • Mt 28:16-20 The popular television show “Unsolved Mysteries,” was a documentary-styled program pursuing answers to crimes and strange events that had yet to be solved and explained. As the saying goes, everyone loves a good mystery, as evidenced by the success of that show and the popularity of so many movies, books, and television programs about solving mysteries and crimes. The Trinity is also a mystery, but not the sort that needs to be...

(Photo: us.fotolia.com | enterlinedesign) In the late 1990s, I read a former Anglican’s conversion story. He said his journey to Catholicism began when he realized the person standing next to him during services, who he knew well, meant the exact opposite of what he did when they recited the Nicene Creed together. Yet both could be Anglicans in good standing. For instance, his neighbor believed we say “the Father almighty” and not “the Mother almighty” because the Church is sexist and patriarchal. But he understood God Himself had revealed Himself as Father, and knew we couldn’t dismiss the theological...

(Photo: us.fotolia.com | matf16) The persecution of the Catholic Church and other morally conservative religious bodies has begun in the United States. As predicted, it isn’t—thank God—bloody persecution like the persecution of Christians in many countries. But it’s real persecution and likely to get worse. This new persecution currently has two prongs. One consists of pressuring individual religious believers to cooperate with public policies inimical to faith. The other prong is pressure targeted at religious groups and institutions to adapt their programs to the promotion of values hostile to the sponsors’ moral convictions. When and if the Supreme Court...

Cardinal Raymond Burke at the extraordinary Synod on the Family in Rome in October 2014 (CNS photo) Kaya Oakes, a revert to Catholicism after spending time as a self-described pro-choice liberal, has penned a little screed—a veritable bundle of befuddlement!—aimed at the recent New Emangelization interview with Cardinal Raymond Burke (which I posted about on Monday). I've not read Oakes' book about her spiritual, uh, arc, which is titled, Radical Reinvention: An Unlikely Return to the Catholic Church, but my impression is that she has some—nay, numerous—issues with orthodoxy, or what she apparently calls "Catholic conservatism", which is in...

Cardinal Raymond L. Burke leaves the concluding session of the extraordinary Synod of Bishops on the family at the Vatican Oct. 18, 2014. (CNS photo/Paul Haring) Matthew James Christoff of the New Emangelization Project has just posted an outstanding interview with Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke that focuses on a number of interrelated issues: the state of men in the Church, the "man crisis", evangelization, marriage, the Mass, and the sacrament of Confession. Here are a few excerpts: On the role played by radical feminism in undermining a needed focus on men: Cardinal Raymond Leo Burke:  I think there has...