Free Republic

It’s time for Catholics to lead true Democrats to start their own party. Catholic Democrats are in a terrible quandary. They vehemently disagree with the Republicans’ approach to policy, so they won’t vote for them. And since the Democratic Party’s leaders stand against religious liberty and for taxpayer-funded abortion, as well as support for stripping marriage of its meaning and endless war, they morally can’t vote for many Democrats either. The only viable option for a traditional Democrat is to not vote at all. It’s a terrible travesty that this has come to pass. It is crucially important that we...

” I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” ~II Timothy 4:7~

Glenn explains it all. /s

The US Catholic bishops' public face over sexual abuse matters has said the hierarchy's credibility on fixing the problem is "shredded" and that the situation is comparable to the Reformation, when "the episcopacy, the regular clergy, even the papacy were discredited," according to a Religious News Service report published on NCR. Bishop Daniel Conlon of Illinois, last month told a conference of staffers who oversee child safety programs in American dioceses that he had always assumed that consistently implementing the bishops' policies on child protection, "coupled with some decent publicity, would turn public opinion around." "I now know this was...

A wave of excitement is gradually making its way through a small community of Catholics in Houston, Texas. Married couples who embrace the Church’s teaching in Humanae vitae and who use natural family planning have waited too long. Houston, which boasts one of the largest and most highly regarded medical systems in the world has, for twenty years, been without an OB/GYN who adheres to the principles of Catholic teaching and good medicine by declining to do abortions, perform sterilizations, prescribe contraception, or resort to immoral infertility “treatments.” But the wait will soon be over and a buzz is in...

A preliminary report, “What Catholic Women Think About Faith, Conscience, and Contraception,” co-authored by Mary Rice Hasson and Michele M. Hill, offers new data about the views of church-going Catholic women, ages 18-54, on faith, conscience, and contraception. This report is part of a larger research effort called the Women, Faith, and Culture Project. Report Highlights * 13% of church-going Catholic women completely accept the Church’s teachings on family planning. * Acceptance of the Church’s teaching on family planning doubles (27%) among young women (aged 18-34) who attend Mass weekly. * 37% of women who both attend Mass weekly and...

Head of diocese is the highest-ranking Catholic cleric in U.S. to be convicted in abuse scandal.Once relatively anonymous in the Roman Catholic world, the Diocese of Kansas City-St. Joseph on Thursday made an unwelcome piece of history for the 2,000-year-old institution. A judge convicted the diocese’s bishop and spiritual pastor, Robert W. Finn, of failing to report child abuse suspicions, making him the highest-ranking U.S. Catholic cleric convicted in the church’s decades-long child sexual abuse scandal. Finn, 59, was acquitted of one other misdemeanor count of failing to report. And with Finn’s conviction, Jackson County prosecutors dismissed two similar counts...

Just in the last three and a half years we have seen the Obama “regime” rejected and lawlessly over ride constitutional and moral laws on the verdicts on, balancing the budget, czars, Obama Care, drilling for oil, the protection of marriage, gays in the military, immigration, state law, the banking industry, the 2nd amendment, separation of powers issues etc. President Obama sees himself “above” the law and outside of its healthy restrictions. This addiction for power and control from this “pee-wee potentate” is plain to see for all. In the name of his subtle and deceiving concerns and personal causes,...

Liberalism - for the most part - rejects out right the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God. The root and source of this rejection - of these crucial moral laws and realities - is their subjective hatred towards the Creator of the heavens and earth (Romans 1:18-32). This base ideology is expressed and manifested in their disdain and hostility towards the American blue print drawn up by our Founding Fathers, which was based on the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God. This ideology is on FULL parade this week at the Democratic Convention for all of America to...

This July at a conference at Mundelein Seminary I heard Cardinal George state that the Church is in a more perilous position in this country then it has ever been. In February he said the Church is being despoiled of her institutions and that the new HHS mandate is nothing short of a demand for the Catholic Church in the United States to “give up her health care institutions, her universities and many of her social service organizations.” He predicted that if the HHS regulations are not rescinded a Catholic institution has the choice to secularize itself, pay exorbitant fines...

In an interview with the student newspaper, the president of the University of Notre Dame, Father John Jenkins, spoke at length of the university’s decision to not add sexual discrimination to its nondiscrimination clause. But he cryptically added that it’s time for the university to take “a fresh look” at issues relating to LGBT students. The decision to not alter the university’s nondiscrimination clause was announced at the end of the last semester and sparked a number of protests including a student led vigil, a number of professors speaking out, and over 100 faculty on campus signing a public letter...

Archbishop Timothy Broglio of the Archdiocese of Military Services delivered this homily at the Sept. 4 memorial mass for Servant of God Father Vincent Capodanno at the Crypt Church of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception. A Maryknoll missionary, military chaplain and U.S. Navy Lieutenant, Father Capodanno was killed in Vietnam on September 4, 1967 while ministering to wounded and dying Marines of the 1st Marine Division. He posthumously received the Medal of Honor, and in 2006 the Catholic Church officially proclaimed him a Servant of God; his story is the subject of The Grunt Padre...

Castel Gandolfo, Italy, Sep 4, 2012 / 02:12 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Pope Benedict XVI told a group of his former students that Christians should not be scared to uphold ethical truths despite the fear of being branded “intolerant.” “Today, the concepts of truth and intolerance have almost fused together, so that to say that one has the truth becomes synonymous with intolerance. And we Christians do not dare to believe or to speak about the truth,” the Pope said in his homily during Sunday morning Mass at Castel Gandolfo. The Sept. 2 liturgy at the papal summer residence marked the...

Hebrew graffiti, including the phrase "Jesus is a monkey," was daubed on the walls of a monastery near Jerusalem early Tuesday in what police suspect was a so-called 'Price Tag' attack by right-wing, pro-settler extremists, according to reports. Vandals torched the wooden door of the Latrun Monastery and spray-painted the graffiti on the holy site's stone walls, Israeli police said.

Salaries for megachurch pastors have increased over the last two years after a short period of stagnation, a new report reveals. According to the 2012 Large Church Salary Report by Leadership Network, senior pastor salaries rose about 2 percent per year for the last two years. These pastors were found, for the most part, to be leading growing churches. The study is the largest-scale project of its kind. Leadership Network has been conducting salary surveys of large churches since 2001. "We were the pioneers in doing so," said Warren Bird, director of Research and Intellectual Capital Development at Leadership Network,...

MANAMA, Bahrain — The building of the largest Roman Catholic church in the Gulf was supposed to be a chance for the tiny island kingdom of Bahrain to showcase its traditions of religious tolerance in a conservative Muslim region where churches largely operate under heavy limitations. Instead, the planned church — intended to be the main center for Catholics in the region — has turned into another point of tension in a country already being pulled apart by sectarian battles between its Sunni and Shiite Muslim communities. Hardline Sunni clerics have strongly opposed the construction of the church complex, in...

The camp officers and groups of the camp guards would go afoot or ride through it in droves, like occupying forces; the camp administration would be the city's main institution; the telephone network would not belong to the city, but to the camps; the bus routes would all lead from the city's center to the camps; and all the town inhabitants would earn their living off the camps. The largest of such provincial capitals of the [Gulag] Archipelago was Karaganda. It was created by and filled with exiles and former prisoners to such a degree that a veteran zek [inmate]...

The west's attitude to the Syrian conflict was described as "hypocrisy" and sharply criticised by the Patriarch of the Syriac Catholic Church in Beirut, Ignatius Ephrem Joseph III. "For many governments it's merely a matter of economic interests. They don't really care about the fate of the Christians in the Middle East. Otherwise they would advocate equality before the law and the observance of human rights for all, including in those countries where the so-called Arab Spring has not taken place", the Beirut Patriarch claims in an interview with the international Catholic charity "Aid to the Church in Need". It's...

The Christian girl who was allegedly framed for blasphemy by her local mullah has been hailed as a "daughter of the nation" by one of Pakistan's most senior Islamic clerics, who also vowed to guarantee her safety if she is eventually released from prison. The heavyweight support for Rimsha Masih from the chairman of the All Pakistan Ulema Council, a grouping of Islamic clerics, is being seen as a remarkable turn of events in a country where individuals accused of insulting Islam are almost never helped by powerful public figures. In a fiery press conference at a central Islamabad hotel,...

Four British Christians who claim they lost their jobs as a result of discrimination against their beliefs are taking their cases to the European Court of Human Rights. They include an airline worker stopped from wearing a cross and a registrar who did not want to marry gay couples. All four lost separate employment tribunals relating to their beliefs. Secular critics have said any ruling in favour of the group could "seriously undermine" UK equality law. A ruling is not expected from the European court for several weeks. The cases involve British Airways check-in clerk Nadia Eweida, nurse Shirley Chaplin,...