Free Republic

I’m not Catholic. But I can certainly understand why my Catholic friends are offended by the new “Three Stooges” movie, helmed by the irreverent Farrelly Brothers, released by Twentieth Century Fox. The film would have been fine had Peter and Bobby Farrelly stuck to the slapstick comedy for which Moe, Larry and Curly are beloved by Stooges fans. But they had to ruin it, had to court controversy, by their sacrilegious portrayal of a Catholic nun as some sort of hoochie. Cast as “Sister Bernice,” Sports Illustrated swimsuit model Kate Upton wears a nun’s veil, an oversized rosary and a...

SNIP One hundred and eighty-two years after its founding, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is certainly prospering. The Church has diversified into commercial enterprises, owning television and radio stations, universities, farms, banks and...retail. Last month, the Church opened City Creek Mall, a stunning billion-dollar downtown renovation in Salt Lake City... Mitt Romney and City Creek represent the culmination of a great transformation within Mormonism. As an outcast faith, early Mormons experimented with communal living and alternative marriages. This original brand of Mormonism was typified by their rugged frontier prophet and polygamist outsider Brigham Young... Young’s egalitarian separatism...

Glen Larson, creator and producer of the first show, is a member of the Church of Latter-day Saints. He based much of the first series on Mormon cosmology. Was there a concerted effort to move away from that in this version? Not specifically, no. I looked at the original series as mythos and the way it dealt with religion as sort of a global sense. I was aware that Glen had used Mormon influences and how he had created the cosmology, but I'm not that familiar with Mormon belief or practice. To me there were things that were sort of...

Psalm 134:1,2 Oh, Bless the Lord, You who Serve Him as Watchmen In the Temple Every Night. Lift your Hands in Holiness And Bless the Lord.

Planned Parenthood’s Prayer of “Thanks for Abortion Providers” and their "Sacred Care” by Matthew Clark, Faith Issues/American Center for Law and Justice “Today we pray for all the staff at abortion clinics around the nation. May they be daily confirmed in the sacred care that they offer women.” This is not a satirical prayer. This is the actual prayer of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion business. Planned Parenthood has recently put out a pro-abortion prayer guide, "40 Days of Prayer Supporting Women Everywhere," encouraging abortion supporters everywhere to offer prayers of “thanks for abortion providers.” As Jay Sekulow, ACLJ...

The Church...of Latter-day Saints affirms...there was a falling away...The long night of apostasy lasted well over a millennium. During this period, man-made creeds and practices were substituted for the plan of salvation that Jesus...taught. SNIP C. A universal apostasy occurred... “For over seventeen hundred years on the eastern hemisphere, and for more than fourteen centuries on the western, there appears to have been silence between the heavens and the earth. Of direct revelation from God to man during this long interval, we have no authentic record...The passing of the apostles was followed by...a universal apostasy...“...an absolute apostasy of the Church...”...

Young Catholic Women Try To Give Church’s Position On Birth Control New Sheen Ashley McGuire is part of a movement of younger, religiously conservative Catholic women who are trying to rebrand what may be Catholicism’s most-ignored teaching: its ban on birth control methods such as the Pill. Michelle Boorstein April 15 Ashley McGuire fell in love with the Catholic Church five years ago, after reading its teaching against artificial birth control. McGuire, then a skeptical Protestant college student, initially saw the ban as a mandatory march to “domestic slavery.” But the more she read, the more she was blown away...

......On board the ship that night was John Harper and his much-beloved six-year-old daughter Nana. According to documented reports, as soon as it was apparent that the ship was going to sink, John Harper immediately took his daughter to a lifeboat. It is reasonable to assume that this widowed preacher could have easily gotten on board this boat to safety; however, it never seems to have crossed his mind. He bent down and kissed his precious little girl; looking into her eyes he told her that she would see him again someday. The flares going off in the dark sky...

Sing to God, O kingdoms of the earth, sing praise to the Lord, to him who rides the ancient skies above, who thunders with mighty voice. Proclaim the power of God, whose majesty is over Israel, whose power is in the skies. You are awesome, O God, in your sanctuary; the God of Israel gives power and strength to his people. Praise be to God! (Psalm 68:32-35)

Not a word from Jesse Jackson. Not a peep from Al Sharpton. Not one black pastor stepped up this week to respond to the attack upon the Christian faith by Louis Farrakhan, leader of the Nation of Islam. In separate appearances at predominantly black Alabama A&M University in Normal, Ala. and Miss ionary Baptist Church in Nashville, Tenn., Farrakhan declared that black Christians are self-hating; that they are following the white man’s religion. “See,” said Farrakhan, “you’ve got a song you sing in the church, ‘Ride on Kind Jesus.’” What it really means, he told his black audience, is “Ride...

US Bishops: Bloggers play ‘critical role’ in defending the Church by Patrick B. Craine Thu Apr 12 9:06 AM EST Relations between Catholic bloggers and Church officials have at times been quite strained as the new media has developed in the last couple years. Some prelates, clergy, and chancery officials have expressed strong reservations about the Catholic blogosphere, with some even speaking quite derogatorily. Church leaders have been angered by the penchant of many bloggers to call them out on their failures to expound and defend controversial Catholic teachings on moral issues like contraception, homosexuality, and abortion. The difficulties...

David never holds any of His feelings back when he pleads with His Heavenly Father. Every heartfelt song/prayer is written with so much anguish and humble spirit behind it. David’s words can teach us to pray to God in the same fashion. There is an undeniable closeness between God and David that the Psalms show us. In Psalm 39 David is recognizing how small we all are in God’s eyes. Imagine that, a King humbling himself enough to see the futility of holding onto material things in our short life compared to eternity. His son Solomon writes in this similar...

” Blessed is the man whose strength is in You.” ~~~ Psalm 84:5 ~~~

...it has long been a given that all religions are equally superior to the Catholic Church. Now that the country has largely de-Christianized, that has expanded to the confidence that all religions are equally superior to Christianity. So, for instance, Cameron's Britain takes it for granted that Christians can not only be compelled not to wear crosses, but that if one of them becomes uppity enough to do so, all you have to do is trot out the language about mean Christians who advertise their faith as though it was superior to other beliefs. Whipped Christians, timid about appearing "judgmental",...

The waiting is the hardest part. Few people in the country followed the Supreme Court’s hearing on the Affordable Care Act more closely than Belmont Abbey College President Bill Thierfelder. As you probably remember, Belmont Abbey College filed the initial lawsuit against the Obama administration’s HHS contraceptive mandate that would require religious institutions, in violation of their conscience, to pay for contraceptive drugs—including those that could cause an abortion. Thierfelder said that the initial idea wasn’t some part of a large legal strategy. It came from a conversation between him and the Abbot of the monastery on campus, Placid Solari,...

As Pope Paul VI once famously told the United Nations, the Catholic church likes to think of itself as an “expert in humanity.” Development of Catholic social teaching over the last 120 years is a good example, as the church has tried to bring its moral tradition to bear on questions of economic justice. Yet whenever the church tries to say something on economics, it faces a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” dilemma about whether or not to get concrete. If the church sticks to abstract principles, it’s accused of being pie in the sky and irrelevant....

Howard Storm and his wife, Marcia Howard Storm was an atheist until he had an extraordinary near-death experience. After that, everything changed. Indeed, he is now a Christian minister. His book, My Descent into Death, shot to prominence globally after the novelist Anne Rice called it “a book you devour from cover to cover, and pass on to others”.She added that “Storm was meant to write it and we were meant to read it.”Storm recently spoke to me from his home in Kentucky. He recounted going out to San Francisco in 1967, aged 19, in pursuit of the hippy dream.“We...

COLUMBUS, Ohio, April 12, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Seminarians from the only Pontifical College in the U.S. have an awe-inspiring approach for confronting abortion head-on. Dressed in full regalia of a black cassock, a traditional red sash, and armed with a rosary, the seminarians descend in a powerful show of force every Saturday on a local abortion facility to confront with prayer what the seminary’s rector calls the “poison of abortion.” Father James Wehner, rector of the Josephinum in Columbus, Ohio, says he believes that seminarians need to “see visibly the forces of evil at work, and respond with an...

Forced to leave campus for reasons of conscience, Vanderbilt University's Catholic student organization has now been ordered by the university to change its name. “The name that's important is the name of Jesus Christ. I don't think they can take that name from us,” said Father John Sims Baker, chaplain of the group that has been told to stop calling itself Vanderbilt Catholic. “Technically and legally, if we wanted to push the issue, I doubt that the university could keep us from that,” Fr. Baker told CNA on April 12. He indicated that the group could also switch to a...

Will you vote the values that will stand the test of fire? Some things are more important than high gas prices or a faltering economy. They are life, marriage and freedom. This November, Catholics must stand up and protect their sacred rights and duties. Please share this YouTube video with your friends! Test of Fire: Election 2012 Visit www.CC2W.org for more details.